


Rosie's Year

by Rubynye



Category: Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gap Filler, Interspecies, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Multiple Relationships, Nonmonogamous Relationship, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, The Shire, Threesome, Year of Troubles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosie's year while Sam and Frodo were away, and after they returned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
  
  
**Current mood:** |   
hopeful  
---|---  
  
_ **Rosie's Year, 1/9 (Rosie-centric, PG-13)** _

So, last year, I wrote _The Rose and the Book_, about Rosie's experiences in the Year of Troubles and the aftermath. Then I decided to edit it a bit. So here it is again, under a new name and with some changes.

This is a sequel to "Festival Dancing", but you don't need to have read that to understand this.

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: One of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Sam/Rosie, Tom/Mari, others mentioned  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present, as will original characters and fleshed out "just-a-name" characters.  
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.

"So, Rosie, is all in order?"

Rosie looked up from the deed in her hands, regarding her father with surprise; he tilted his head, and she took a steadying breath, schooled her expression, and bent her gaze to the deed again. It was made out in a large scratchy hand, and full of long bumpy words, but from what Rosie read it gave ownership of the smial at Twelve South Lane, Bywater, and the farm with it, to Tolman Cotton, formerly of Hobbiton. "It's all in order, Dad," Rosie said as calmly as she could, being as that she held her first news of her new home in her hands.

"Of course it is," said the Widow Chubb, arms folded before her plump frame, eyes glittering above her wide smile. "So we are agreed, Farmer Cotton?"

"We're agreed, Mrs. Chubb." Rosie's father gave Widow Chubb a firm handshake and a small heavy-clinking bag, and she turned to go back into Number Twelve while he guided Rosie back to the cart, the deed still in her hand. Placidly smiling, Farmer Cotton began whistling; Rosie tucked the deed away carefully, then clenched her hands together and made herself count the pony's hoofbeats, one, two, nineteen, twenty. "Dad!"

"Lovely large smial, ain't it, Rosie? And the farm's near half as big again as ours in Hobbiton. I still can't believe not a one of the Chubb lads wanted it." The pony plodded onward. The whistling began again. Rosie gritted her teeth. "Dad, why are we moving to Bywater?"

"Solid walls, all in good repair, and the best garden this side of Bag End. Tigerlily Chubb and her daughters kept it well."

Rosie tried a different angle. "Dad, won't moving take Tom from Mari?" Her father shook his head; that was a relief, at least. "I'm selling just the fields. Tom will have the chickens and the goat barn; that's a good portion for a hobbit to marry on."

"Good, Dad. I mean, Mari's right sweet on him, she'll be a good wife, if he ever speaks. It'd not be right to part them." Rosie sighed, thinking for a moment of Marigold's brother. "But that don't tell me why, Dad. Why are we moving?"

"Mari'll be a good wife to Tom, and she'd be best off Bagshot Row before the new Master arrives in Bag End. And so, Rosie my lass, would you." He looked at Rosie full on now, no more whistling or teasing. "So would all of us, but Daddy Twofoot's stubborn as the day.is long, and Gaffer Gamgee's worse yet. For my part I ain't waiting to live under the thumb of the Sackville-Bagginses, and I ain't letting my family wait for trouble, specially my fair lass." He chucked Rosie gently beneath her chin, and she realized her mouth had been hanging open in astonishment; his smile turned sad as he continued, "if you and Sam were still walking out, your Mam and I might think different, maybe, but, well, he's going to Crickhollow to do for Mr. Frodo, and you're not going with him, so plain is plain, Rosie my lass."

_Oh._ Rosie nodded, and looked down at her hands, because if she opened her mouth she might loose a sob. Plain was plain, at that; her heart ached, but she had to agree. Her Dad put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned silently on him as they drove home.

 

*

 

Rosie shoved the chest over to the foot of her bed and stood up, her arms over her head, stretching her back out. Her new room was a bit smaller than the last, barely big enough for a bed and two chests, but at least it had a window, a foot off the ground, which looked out into the back garden; outside that window stood a little, fine-leaved rosebush, filling and screening the view. Jolly had joked when Sam planted it that it was to make sure no one climbed in through Rosie's window of nights, and Rosie had chased him across the yard for saying so. Now she stood by her window, just above her head's height, and reached out to brush a speck of soil off of a dark glossy leaf, and wondered what color its flowers would be; Sam had told her only that it had the prettiest roses he could find, "though not so pretty as you." She had laughed at that, because her choice was laugh or weep; now she wondered if she would be able to look at the roses, however pretty they were, and think of Sam, without weeping.

A soft scratching at her door, and when she turned Sam stood in the doorway, drying his hands, and how her heart hurt. "Rosie, I'll be going soon," he said, and opened his mouth to try to say more, and after a moment bit his lip.

"I'm glad you came to help us," Rosie said, marveling at her own voice's steadiness, as she pulled him into the room and shut the door before her hold on herself broke. "Sam," she gasped, and threw herself on him, and he all but carried her over to the bed and sat. "Sam," she murmured, pressing her face into his chest, clutching his shoulders desperately. "I didn't think it'd be so hard."

"Rosie, Rosie." Sam shook beneath her hands, kissed her hair. "I didn't neither. I didn't know. Should I not have come?"

"No, I'm glad to see you. I'm glad you came." Rosie raised her face, took a deep breath, smiled up at him; he snuffled and wiped his face with his handkerchief, and smiled back, though his eyes were red. _Will I see you again?_ Rosie wanted to ask, but she knew only more tears could come of the question; she swallowed hard and propped up her smile as she asked, "When are you leaving?"

"Five days, I think, day after Mr. Frodo's birthday." Sam's smile looked propped-up, too. "I'd ask you to see us off, but Mr. Frodo wants to go quiet-like." Rosie nodded at that; she didn't know if she could have borne it. "I should give you his birthday gift, before I forget," Sam continued, and rummaged one of his pockets for a small, thick, square item wrapped in a fine lace handkerchief.

It proved to be a little thick book bound in soft dark-brown leather, cracked slightly with age at the edges, a book the size of a lady hobbit's hand. Rosie opened to the inner front cover, and read, simply, "To Miss Rose Cotton. From Mr. Frodo Baggins." Underneath was a short word in flowing Elvish script; Sam pointed to it and said, "Mr. Frodo said to tell you that's 'na-ma-rie', farewell. He bids you farewell, and to be happy."

Rosie nodded, scrunching the handkerchief in her hand; Sam folded his hand around hers. "I will try, Sam. Tell him I said for him to be happy, that I hope he comes to, well, whatever he saw in his future, all these years." Sam squeezed her hand; she swallowed and lifted her head, the smile a little easier to wear. "And tell Mr. Frodo that if he don't look after you, and you don't look after him, you both will have Rose Cotton to answer to."

Sam smiled at that, and drew Rosie close, his hand warm on her back; Rosie rubbed her face against his rough shirt, feeling his broad chest beneath her cheek for the last time in, well, it didn't bear thinking on. "Have a good journey, Sam. Don't forget your hat." That made Sam laugh, said hat being an ugly shapeless thing that she had proudly knitted for his gift when she'd turned thirteen, and which he had steadfastly refused to give back or burn up in the intervening twenty years. Rosie smiled to hear him laugh, heart still aching but glad all the same, and laid her hand on his cheek to draw him down for two kisses. "And give him this one," she whispered over Sam's lips, as she'd done so many times, before the second kiss.

A knock at the door made them both jump. Rosie sat back, tucked the book beneath her pillow, took a steadying breath, and called, "Come in!" ; her mother entered, stopped in the doorway, and glared at them both. "I had wondered where you'd got to, Samwise," she said sourly, and Rosie bit her lip rather than sass her own mother in Sam's defense. "Will you stay for dinner, lad?"

"No, thank'ee, Mrs. Cotton," Sam replied in the general direction of his toes. "I'd best be getting back, thank you kindly."

"Well, then." Pointedly not disagreeing, Rosie's mother held the door open for him; when he glanced back at Rosie her mother coughed, and Sam blushed all the deeper and left just short of a run. Rosie got up to go, but her mother turned to face her, stepping into the room and shutting the door.

Rosie put her hands on her hips. "Mam---"

"You will hear this, Rose Cotton, like it or no." Arms folded before her, Rosie's mother faced her down, and Rosie sat heavily with a resigned sigh. "I've never seen a lass and lad like you and Sam. I know you've more sense than to tumble with a lad who don't care for you---" Rosie winced; her mother continued relentlessly---"and I know Samwise neither could nor would lie so. But if he cares for you why ain't you going to Crickhollow as his wife? And if he don't why is he here when he's enough work packing up Bag End? Tell it to me, Rose, I don't see it."

_How can I?_ Rosie thought, pressing her hands to her brow. "Mam," she whispered, rubbing her hands over her eyes, which were already prickling.

"Rosie." Her mother came to her, sat beside her, wrapped an arm around her. "Rosie lass. Don't you see, I'm cross because you're my child? I care for you, Rosie. I won't see you hurt, even by Samwise, even by yourself."

There was no point in saying she wasn't hurt, not with her eyes overflowing again. "I know, Mam," Rosie replied, voice hitching, and her mother held her and rubbed her back as she took several deep breaths and knuckled her eyes till they stopped running over. "I'm all right, Mam. Thank you."

"You be sure of that, Rose," her mother kissed her brow. "We have guests for supper," she said, standing, and Rosie put on a smile and rose to follow her out to the kitchen.

Guests indeed; several family friends had come to help the Cottons move, so the table was packed with guests and cheer. Farmer Cotton had also taken on Mistress Chubb's two farmhands; Rosie met them and smiled, and sat and considered them during the dinner to keep her mind off of her departed lads. Fastolph Chubb was the late Farmer Chubb's nephew, a couple of years of age, dark-haired and quiet but smiling, while Anders Hamwich was a cheerful lad in his middle tweens, brown-haired and brown-eyed and solidly built. A nice-looking lad, Rosie thought, and smiled to see her brother Nick chattering away with Andy as if they'd known each other for an age. His sister Buttercup, who had come with him for the dinner, was shyer, blushing and smiling as Jolly earnestly told her joke after joke, and Rosie smiled to watch them, too.

When the talk turned to the new Master of Bag End, Rosie fled the table as inconspicuously as she could. Her tears would hardly sweeten the dinner, she thought wryly, standing in the kitchen looking for something to do. The cake sat on the sideboard, with a pitcher of rosehip syrup to go with; Rosie loved her namesake flower and its fruit, but she couldn't eat any more amidst gossip on Mr. Frodo and speculation on the Sackville-Bagginses, so she set the cake and syrup on the table and took as many dishes as she could carry over to the sink, shutting her ears as best she could.

Fastolph followed her, carrying a good load of dishes. Rosie fervently hoped he wouldn't bring the conversation with him. "Evening, Miss Rose," he said, picking up a kitchen towel, "Can I be a help?"

"Thank you, Master Chubb," Rosie replied formally, but with a smile. "I appreciate it."

"Oh, it's Stolph." He flashed a wide smile. "Your father has some good plans for the farm." His eyes flicked over her, not impertinently---they began at and returned to her face---but boldly enough, asking clear as speech, _does the farmer's fair daughter have a lad, and would she like one?_

Rosie tensed, and yet was relieved that this was his reason for joining her; she could almost have laughed, but that was the wrong response for this game. Instead she said, "does he?" as she took a small step back. _Thank you kindly, but no._

Fastolph shrugged and didn't step forward, keeping his smile, and she relaxed a little. _All right then, no slight taken._ "He wants to plant wheat on the south fields, that have lain under naught but weedy pasture these last few years. This farm got to be a bit much for my uncle, may he rest, before the end. It'll be good to see it bearing fully again."

"That does sound good." Rosie smiled more warmly. _Good, then._

 

*

 

Summer turned to fall. and Rosie kept busy helping her mother make their new smial into a home and preserving fruits and herbs from the garden and orchard. Sometimes when she had a moment she brought her book out with her into the garden and read a poem or a story, or just looked through the pages, noting that three or four different hands had worked to fill it. One had to be Mr. Frodo's, still neat and square though made small to fit the book; another, filling the first half of the book, was much like his but for a feminine roundness to it, and Rosie wondered whose handwriting it was.

In early October, Rosie was singing "Princess Mee", adding verses she had learned from her book, while she hung the wash between the elder and quince trees. Feet came to the garden gate, and Rosie turned to see Tom come home early, his arm around a white-faced Marigold. "Rosie?"

"Tom? Mari? What---_Sam_." _Mr. Frodo_. Rosie stopped halfway in her rush towards them, so frozen by fear she nearly fell. Tom nodded grimly; Mari pushed the heel of her hand against her eyes, and Rosie saw a letter crumpled in that hand.

Rosie took a deep breath, unstuck her feet from the ground, went to them. "But Mari, what's the news? Who read you the letter?" Marigold shook her head, but then all of her was shaking, as she uncurled her fingers so Rosie could take the letter from her. "No one read it," she said dully. "I know what it must say."

"You don't know, Mari. Come, let me read it to you." Rosie could walk, could think, if she were doing for her friend, so she put an arm around Mari's waist, and between her and Tom they got Mari into their kitchen and into a chair at the table. Rosie put on water for tea, then stared at the crumpled parchment in her hand, wanting to throw it into the fire. But then, they would never know. Every step making her feet feel heavier, Rosie walked over to the window and opened the letter.

The letter was addressed to the Gamgees, with Bolger Hall, Budgeford as the return address. Inside, Rosie read:

_ To the Gamgee family,  
I truly regret to inform you of the disappearance of Frodo Baggins and of his servant Samwise Gamgee. On September 30, Mr. Baggins' home at Crickhollow was attacked by unknown assailants; he, Samwise, Meriadoc Brandybuck, and Peregrin Took, fled into the Old Forest, while my son Fredegar raised an alarm and had the Horn-Call of Buckland sounded. I will send more news as I know it, but I must frankly not abuse you with false hopes._

Regretfully yours,  
Odovacar Bolger

The next thing Rosie knew was Tom holding her awkwardly, one arm beneath her back, as he shouted for their mother. _I must have swooned,_ Rosie thought numbly, trying to force her limbs to obey her. Tom got Rosie into a chair as their mother ran into the kitchen, took in the scene, and suddenly was everywhere with hot tea and cold cloths.

Not that Rosie could think much on her mother's efficiency, or really on anything. Tom leaned her forward like a doll, arranged her elbows on her knees, stroked her hair. "Rosie," he said urgently, but she heard him as from a great distance, from outside an icy wall of numbness. _Samwise_, she thought. _Mr. Frodo._ Vanished into the dark and dangerous Old Wood, facing unimaginable peril. Likely gone forever. Like as not dead.

Rosie began to shiver. "Rosie, tea?" Tom asked helplessly. Somewhere in the distance, Mari was weeping, Rosie's mother was saying soothing things. Rosie couldn't hear them. She couldn't weep, her eyes were frozen, her heart was frozen. Sam was gone, and Mr. Frodo was gone, and she felt in that moment she would never thaw to warmth again.

 

*

 

Eventually, Tom rode with Mari back to Hobbiton, as she was in no shape to walk. Jolly and Nibs went with their mother up to Overhill to tell Sam's sister Daisy, who was heavily pregnant and needed to be told gently. That left Nick and their father at home to cobble up supper and care for Rosie; Nick faced this situation for perhaps a half minute before racing off down the road and returning with Andy and Buttercup, who helped him make dinner while Rosie's Da sat on the side of her bed and rubbed her back.

Rosie lay on her side, feeling her back being rubbed as if it were someone else's. She didn't remember being brought to her room, unlaced, put to bed. She lay now, looking out the window at the rosebush, ice in all her veins, her heart a stone. Sam and Mr. Frodo were gone, beyond the Shire, beyond hope.

"Rosie." Her father said her name gently, every so often; after awhile he rested his hand on her shoulder, and slowly its warmth began to warm her. "Rosie, I'm sorry Sam is gone."

"I know, Da." The rosebush's leaves trembled a little in the wind.

"You might feel better if you cry," he suggested. Rosie shook her head. How could she cry for Sam, if she couldn't cry for Mr. Frodo? How could she explain it, weeping for both?

At length, her father spoke again, slowly, deliberately. "I know Mr. Frodo was good to you, and not just when you were small." The shock of those words rolled Rosie over to look at her father, who was looking at her with warm understanding eyes. "For all that he was gentry, he was always one to take his friends as he found them. And I know you love Sam, you ever have. So you've lost two friends. That's a heavy grief to bear, Rosie. "

Rosie opened her mouth to say something, but what emerged was indeed a sob. She curled up again, her head on her father's knee, and he stroked her hair as she wept, just as if she were small. Rosie melted into the tears, wept till her heart could beat again, till the grief and fear were all drained out and she lay limp and empty and exhausted. When her sobs subsided to sniffles, her father wiped her face for her. "Better?" he asked; she nodded, and he tucked her into the bed. "I'll bring you some tea in a bit, and some supper after, if Nick and the Hamwich chits don't burn the smial down." He smiled, and Rosie managed a weak smile back. "Remember what your Mam always says, Rosie? 'Life will find a way.'' "

Rosie nodded again, thinking on that wisp of hope, and her father kissed her brow and left her to rest. Thinking with wonder on her father's keensightedness, Rosie curled up, moving her head on the pillow; feeling a lump beneath her ear, she remembered her book and drew it out to hold in her hands. As she looked at the book, stroking the soft dark leather, she thought, as if Mr. Frodo spoke in her ear,_your father understands, but thank the stars he doesn't know the whole of it!_ That thought actually brought a smile to her face, and she could just picture Mr. Frodo's and Sam's answering smiles; still smiling, still holding her book, Rosie fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_ **Rosie's Year, 2/9. PG-13** _

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: Two of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Tom/Mari, Jolly/Buttercup, Nick/Andy, others discussed  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present. So will nonexplicit violence and occasional angst, as will original characters and fleshed out "just-a-name" characters.. And stuff.   
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.

In years after, if one had asked the hobbits of the Shire just when they recalled as the start of the Troubles, the answers one would have received would have differed within a range. Some hobbits would have spoken of the first appearance of numbers of Men, rough-looking characters with long arms and grasping hands, who sneered and swaggered about as if they owned the Shire, cutting down grand old trees to build themselves nasty-looking shacks and bullying any hobbit who gainsaid them. Other hobbits would have said it was when Lotho tore down the Old Mill, replacing it with a strange brick building full of stranger contrivances that milled rough, uneven flour. The inhabitants of Hobbiton would unanimously have given the answer of September 24th, the day the Sackville-Bagginses moved into Bag End. One might have expected Rosie and Marigold to say the day Mari received the dreadful letter, but they would not have, not even later when Rosie knew how Mr. Frodo and Sam's disappearance was tied in with the Troubles; even so, that letter was mostly their own families' sorrow. Rosie and Mari would have told you of the day around a fortnight later when Mari again returned to Twelve South Lane under Tom's sheltering arm, this time bearing a torn bodice; they would have picked that day not for sake of the frock or Mari's hurt, but for the first sign of a spreading ill that would soon affect all the Shire.

 

*

 

It was late October, and Rosie was working hard as ever, but couldn't make herself sing. Every time she tried, the song would stick in her mouth, and she would remember Sam or Mr. Frodo or both, and her throat would close with tears. This day was sunny, after days of rain; Rosie was in the garden collecting seeds for spring planting, wrapping them in twists of paper and marking the names with a stick of wax and soot, a much easier way of keeping track of their different kinds than trying to keep them with a well-formed leaf or sprig. Sam could tell any seed by its shape and tint, but Rosie needed a bit more help with her gardening than that.

The thought of Sam brought a familiar tightening to Rosie's throat, and she paused for a moment to press the heel of one hand to her eyes. _Oh, my Sam, will I ever be able to think on you without tears? _ Music came to her ear, and she gratefully turned to listen to Buttercup, who had been hired on to help around the house, singing as she swpt. Rosie smiled as she listened, and reminded herself of her Mam's words, that life would find a way.

It was well that Rosie remembered those words, because when she looked up again Tom and Mari stood at the garden gate, Tom holding a bundle of cloth in one arm and Mari's shoulders in the other; Mari held a smaller bundle in her hands, and they were both white-faced and shaking. Her belly going cold with fear, Rosie couldn't say a word of greeting; she pressed her fist to her mouth, not wanting to hear whatever dreadful news this day brought.

Jaw clenched, Tom jerked his head towards the house; Rosie picked up her basket of seed-packets and made herself join them there. Mari was sitting at the kitchen table when Rosie arrived, holding her cloak around herself and staring at nothing; she looked like a flower frozen by unexpected frost, so different from the cheerful lass Rosie had grown up with that Rosie could almost have wept just for the terrible change, but it wasn't her tears they needed. "Tom?" Rosie asked as she put a hand on Marigold's shoulder.

Tom laid the bundle down on the table; Rosie realized it was wrapped in a shawl, that it must be a grown lass's clothes. He sat beside Mari, closing his hands around hers so tightly Rosie winced, and winced again that Mari didn't. "She ain't going back to Bagshot Row," he said.

Rosie blinked. "Mari? What befell?"

"Can you do me a bit of mending?" Mari replied tonelessly, still staring before her. Rosie bit her lip, puzzled. "I can, but what happened?" Mari handed over the bundle in her hands, and Rosie unfolded it and gasped; it was a bodice, Mari's favorite dark-green working-bodice, and it was torn along both side seams, as if the front had been nearly pulled off. "Mari, what happened to it?"

Tom growled. Mari said, "Mr. Lotho tried to take it off me," in that same dull shocky voice. Rosie understood, and gasped again, horrified; she'd heard whispers that Lotho Sackville-Baggins was the sort of gentlehobbit who expected warming-pan duties from his servants, it was one of the reasons why her father had moved them off Bagshot Row, but this was even worse, that he would raise his hand to Mari, try to force her. Rosie dropped the bodice, sitting beside Mari to put her arms round her, even as Tom jumped to his feet, flaring to anger. "Don't call him Mister! That Lotho Pimple, I should---"

"Tom Cotton, watch your tone," Rosie said; Mari began to shake in her arms. Tom growled again, but his voice was lower as he continued, "he deserves a thrashing and more. Two thrashings, one for asking such as he never should've and one for laying a hand to Marigold!"

Rosie opened her mouth, but it was Mari who replied, voice hitching, "and you would be the one thrashed, Tom, by those Men of his. I ain't worth it." Mari turned, pressing her face into Rosie's shoulder; Rosie felt her sleeve dampen.

"You're worth it twenty times over," Tom retorted, fists balled. Mari turned again to glare at him, and despite it all, because of it all, Rosie could almost have smiled; then Mari held out her arms, and Tom fell to his knees before her and kissed her hard, and Rosie did smile at them. Life would find a way, they had to hope.

"Tom," Mari murmured, then sat up a little, the color slowly coming back to her face. "Rosie. I, I'll be all right. Naught really happened. When I screamed he let me go." Finding a handkerchief in her apron pocket, Rosie pressed it into Mari's hand. "I suppose I should go to Daisy's, I was going to go soon anyway, to help after she had the babies, but I'd hoped to take my pay with me. I went to ask for it---" Marigold's face crumpled, and Rosie held her tighter.

"Instead you'll take a basket of food from the Cotton farm," Tom insisted. "You ain't going back. Your Gaffer said so." Marigold nodded, and pressed her face to Rosie's shoulder again.

"Tom? Rosie?" Buttercup stood in the doorway with the broom and dustpan. "Can I, what, I mean...?"

"Buttercup dear, go down to the orchard and fetch our Mam, all right? It's all right." Marigold was weeping into her shoulder; Tom knelt beside them, face grim. Rosie heard her own words hollow in her ears, but what else could she say? "It's all right."

 

*

 

"You should have seen the crowd," said Tom wearily over dinner the next Tuesday. The day before, he had sent Jolly and Nibs to the Hobbiton farm so he might accompany Marigold and Daisy's husband Marroc to Michel Delving, to complain to the Mayor Will Whitfoot. There they had found a large group of hobbits waiting to do the same thing, and passing the time by telling each other their tales of grievance. "Lotho Pimple and his Men have been busy. Taking goods and not paying, cutting down trees as ain't theirs, even raising their hands to a hobbit or two who've complained. Marmadas Moss had his arm in a sling, and said his brother was home with both legs broken." Tom laughed bitterly, shaking his head. "We even met a lass from Sackville, she said her sister had been Miz Lobelia's maid and had had to give her notice to Pimple with a slap to the face."

Farmer Cotton laughed at that, but mirthlessly. "So, what did Whitfoot say, lad? Can he deal with Lotho Pimple and his Men?" Rosie laid her spoon down, waiting for the answer.

Tom paused for a drink, long enough to pace his story, but not so long that one of his sibs would throw a roll at his head. "I don't know but that all Mayor Whitfoot can deal with is a dish of his fellow dumplings," Tom replied, lip curling. "He told Mari to go stay with her sister and she could file a complaint for her pay. We could have told him _that_." Tom snorted in derision. "I don't see what use he can be."

"Then who will deal with Pimple?" asked Nick, echoing all their thoughts. Rosie looked around the table at her family, sitting silently; finally, Jolly suggested, "Mayhap the Thain?"

"Mayhap," said their father, but he sounded doubtful.

Still, as Sam's Gaffer often said, where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles. Wednesday was Market Day, which Rosie usually enjoyed, the bustling and the wares, the cheerful gossip and cheerfuller haggling; she knew she'd need her rest for it, so she went to bed early. Rosie undressed by a candle's light, lay down, reached beneath her pillow to touch her book, went to sleep feeling a peace that was unexpected but welcome all the same. When she slept she dreamt of sunshine and a lush garden and Sam, singing with light in his hair; she woke smiling with the image of Sam in her mind, and smiled wider yet when she realized the thought didn't hurt, that she had thought of Sam without tears.

Rosie climbed out of bed and stretched, feeling full of life and the morning; she wrapped herself in her robe and went down to the bath-room, where she found Jolly wearing a towel and drawing a bath. "Wilcome Cotton, thank you kindly!"

Jolly made a face at her. "This is _my_ bath."

"No it ain't, Jolly; unless you're coming to market today with me and Mam." Rosie put her hands on her hips and grinned, expecting a teasing salvo in reply, or for him to yield the bath; instead Jolly regarded her with surprise and pity. "I thought you knew, Rosie."

"Knew what?" That look on his face did not bode well. He looked too sad for her by half.

Jolly shook his head, spread his hands helplessly. "I know you like going to market, but…go talk to Dad, he's in the kitchen. Don't be cross with me, Rose, please."

Mystified, Rosie did as Jolly directed, and found her parents in the kitchen, her mother in a house-dress and simmering like a pot on coals and her father looking weary already. "Mam, you ain't dressed," Rosie said, surprised; then she understood, and, fists clenching, rounded furiously on her father. "_Dad!_"

Farmer Cotton set his shoulders, folded his arms, drew himself up, and hardened his voice. "I think it's best if the lads go to market today, Rose."

"But Da! I had shopping of my own, I wanted sugar and ribbons and lemons if they could be had!" Rosie heard herself, took a breath, tried to not sound like a disappointed child. "Mam and I won't let some swaggering ruffian steal our wares, if that's what you're worrying on. We ain't soft!"

"Mind your tone, Rose," said her mother behind her. Rosie gasped as if she'd been slapped; then she heard the ashes of anger in her mother's voice, and understood. She sighed and bent her head, forcing her hands to drop limply by her sides, and muttered, "I beg your pardon, Dad."

"I know, Rose." Her father put his hand on her shoulder, put his arm round her, pulled her close. "Lily, Rosie. I'm sorry." Rosie's mother snorted, and didn't look at him, but she came to him and leaned into the circle of his other arm. "It just seems best, till these Men can be brought to heel and made to behave more neighborly. Besides, it's just market, ain't it? We lads can fetch home what you need."

_It ain't just market, or leastways it won't be_, Rosie thought sourly, but leaned into her father's shoulder nevertheless.

 

*

 

So, Rosie spent her day milking and mucking alongside Andy and Stolph, and Nick, who had so-generously sent Nibs to market in his place. Rosie's suspicions as to his reasons were confirmed when she went to the cellar after luncheon and heard the unmistakable sound of kissing; she peeked around the corner, saw Nick's head just past Andy's shoulder, smiled to herself, and left them at it. Of course, she was pleased enough with her own magnanimity that at tea she made sure to ask Andy if he knew any hidden corners to the cellars, which made him and Nick blush most amusingly, and Buttercup titter knowingly behind her hand.

"Actually," said Stolph, "There's a room to the left, back of the beer barrels. A year or three ago, was it, Andy, when the doorway fell in?" Andy nodded distractedly, as he was seated beside Nick, who was eating at a sturdy pace but with only one hand; the other was under the table, Rosie noticed, suppressing a giggle. "That could be a useful room to open up again," she mused. "Mam, what do you think?"

"It would make a good January project for a few strong lads," agreed Mrs. Cotton. "When your father returns we'll ask him."

As it turned out, they did not ask him that evening, because Farmer Cotton returned home at dusk with a scowl on his face and a half-empty basket, and when Nibs and Jolly came through the door Jolly was leaning on Nibs, favoring his right leg, and sporting a split bottom lip and a 'black' eye so spectacularly bruised it would have been better to call it 'rainbow'. Buttercup squealed when she saw Jolly and ran to him, but his mother got there first. "Do I want to hear it?" she asked her son sternly, voice quavering just a bit.

Jolly laughed, and winced, and coughed; Nibs bit his lip to keep in a grin, while their father glowered at them. "This addlepated fool," he told his wife in disgusted tones, "took on a great brute twice his height."

"Knocked him down, too," said Nibs, proudly, before he subsided beneath his parents' combined glares. Once Rosie would have laughed with her brothers, but now worry curled up cold in her belly; Jolly looked quite hurt despite his cheer, and if he'd tussled with a Man it might be trouble beyond the fight's end.

Mrs. Cotton and Nibs eased Jolly onto the bench inside the door; Rosie caught Buttercup's wrist and took her off to the kitchen to fetch a basin of water, a handful of clean rags, and a bit of beef scraped from the suet they had waiting to be rendered. They left in the silence and returned to hear Nibs yelp twice in quick succession. "And that's the clout I'd give Jolly if his hide could bear another," Rosie's father was saying crossly, as Nibs winced and rubbed his ear. "You bloody idiot, Wilcome Cotton." Rosie realized her father's voice was shaking, that he was milk-white beneath his tan, and her own breath hitched with worry. This looked rather more serious than a scuffle between hobbit lads.

Jolly hadn't realized it quite yet. "But Da! They emptied the Toadfoots' stall, they could have emptied ours! And when that Man pinched Betony, how could I stand for it?" He would have said more, but winced when Rosie laid the beef bits to his eye and wrapped a rag round to hold them.

"Next time I will see you stand for it," their father informed Jolly, his voice now firm and so cold all the young hobbits froze and stared at him with wide eyes. "You could have been hurt something dreadful, boy. Hurt past all mending. You're right lucky he left off when I asked, and was content with the coin I had on me." Their mother sucked in her breath at that, and glared so hard at Jolly he winced, but their father laid a calming hand on her arm. "It's all right, Lily. There were hardly goods to buy, at any rate." She nodded, and reached up to take his hand, and they gripped each other so hard their knuckles went white.

"The market's bare?" Nick asked. "It's after Harvest, Dad! Where'd it all go?"

"Into those great wagons the Men keep packing and driving off," their father replied, before he sighed, seeming to shrink a bit. "Jolly, you great tomfool," he said lovingly, and Jolly smiled, though he winced and his lip began bleeding again so that Buttercup had to press hard on it with another rag. "You were right to help a lass in need, but it could have gone far worse."

Jolly nodded as best he could; Nibs, however, put in, "But Dad, it didn't!"

"Next time, it might." Nibs shut up at that. "So there won't be a next time. No matter what." Jolly rolled his eyes eloquently; his father caught his gaze, held it. "Understand?"

"Yes, Dad," said Nibs in surrender. Jolly nodded again, eyes downcast. Their father patted each of them on the shoulder, then smiled at Buttercup and at Andy standing beside Nick. "You two should be on home," he said to them. "I don't want your folks to hear a mixed-up bit of gossip and think you were all in it."

Andy nodded, stepping away from Nick with a long look; Buttercup looked up at Jolly, and he put a hand on the hand she was using to hold a cloth to his mouth, and after a moment she let go. Rosie rolled her eyes, but she smiled, and as Nick saw the Hamwiches out the door she took up Buttercup's place at Jolly's side. "You look like rocks in cold porridge," she informed him warmly, and he elbowed her gently, smiling as best he could with that split lip.

 

*  
.

By December, the question of who would go to market was moot; the market had dwindled to those few hobbits who were hopeful or cowed enough to continue doing business with Lotho's Men. The Men weren't good customers, to say the least; they took what they pleased, were horrifyingly rude, and were more likely than not to leave behind a broken stall or cart or a hobbit's arm when their day was through. The hobbits began trading amongst themselves, and those who could read and write sent orders through the Post. The letters that Farmer Cotton received meant an extra chore for Rosie, but a pleasant one, and it meant that she could shift some of the dishwashing off onto Nick.

Even so, Rosie would have gladly washed twice as many dishes if it meant the Men would leave the Shire and life would return to normal. One day she was in the garden, digging a few roots with Buttercup's help and company, when she heard feet on the road, oddly heavy. The hobbit lasses turned, and froze; strolling up the road, laughing coarsely, were three Men.

Rosie had seen Men occasionally, very tall with hawk noses and hair like lengths of thread and long swords by their side, or a little shorter and plumper like overly-large round-eared hobbits, but these Men were different from both, with their greasy hair and long arms, bandy legs and unwashed rankness. A memory came to Rosie, of Mr. Bilbo's tales of orcs and goblins; Buttercup's whimper called her back to the present.

Unfortunately, if one can see one can be seen. "Hul-lo, and what have we here!" one of the Men called, and in far too few strides they were at the garden gate. "Good day there, little misses! Come say hello to us, do?"

Rosie reached for Buttercup, to clutch her for support or to shove her back out of sight, she didn't know; Buttercup decided it by clutching Rosie's arm. Heart thudding, tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, Rosie shook her head and took a step backwards, pulling Buttercup with her. The Men laughed nastily, and the one who'd spoken reached over the gate, beckoning. "Garn! C'mere, I said! We don't bite, do we boys?"

"Not much," grunted another, and they laughed again. Rosie took a deep breath to scream with, and frantically thought of which windows were nearest that she and Buttercup could fit through; however, after the Men nudged each other and ogled the lasses a moment longer, they turned away and set off down the road, laughing and joking, and when they went round the bend Rosie could breathe again.

Buttercup stood shaking by her side, fingers still digging into Rosie's arm. "Let's go in," Rosie said, her voice shaking nearly as badly, and Buttercup wordlessly nodded.

 

*

 

Fortunately, the next time footsteps came by their smial they were more welcome. Rosie was pulling heavy coats out of their closet, breathing in the delightful scent of the thyme and lavender used as mothsbane, when her mother found her and announced, "Rosie, Freddy Sandheaver has come to call on you!"

Rosie started at that news, shaking her head. Tthe last time she'd seen Freddy for any real length of time had been at Lithe, when she'd danced with him once but not twice; that Midsummer evening she'd danced with not a few lads, not least Mr. Frodo Baggins. Now Freddy was come to see her? She untied her hair and shook dust and bits of dried herbs from it, looped the ribbon into a pretty bow, and came out to see her guest.

Freddy was indeed there, with his brother Robin, who was currently standing on his head in the middle of the front hallway while Nibs and Nick and Buttercup laughed. Jolly came in and picked Robin up by his ankles and swung him a bit, which made them all laugh even more.

"Well, Freddy!" Rosie squeezed his hands. "I see Robin's keeping just fine! How are your Mam and Dad and sisters and young Davy?"

"They're all keeping fine, just fine," said Freddy with a brittle smile, tugging at Rosie's hands as if to lead her from the entryway. After a moment's hesitance, she let him draw her down the hall into the parlor. "Rosie, I, well, I came here because I wanted to ask you---"

"Here they are!" Nibs shouted, and Freddy dropped her hands as if they were hot while the whole pile of Rosie's brothers bounded behind Nibs into the parlor. "Ain't you coming to tea? It's ready!" If looks could have killed, Freddy could have struck Nibs dead on the spot, but Nibs didn't even notice as he and Nick and Robin all raced each other to the kitchen. Rosie shrugged, smiled at Freddy, and followed her brothers.

Freddy and Robin had come with news from Hobbiton, which they cheerfully shared with the Cottons over tea. Some of it made Rosie sad, such as the news that the garden at Bag End was in quite a bad way after only a few months, the gardener having left to return to Sackville ("driven to drink and missing his family," Robin said); the lads laughed, but Rosie's Mam said what Rosie thought, that it was "a great pity to think of all the Gamgees' work wasted." Some of it puzzled her, such as the tale of the needless new Mill, which was apparently not an improvement on the old one in any way except size. However, much of it made her laugh, such as the tale of Miz Lobelia standing at Bag End's front door, shrieking and shaking her umbrella at the retreating backs of the servants fleeing her employ ("not a one in Hobbiton will work for the Sackville-Bagginses now, not for all the beer in Bree," said Robin). Through the entire meal, Freddy laughed and chattered along with his brother, but his eyes kept flicking over to Rosie, who drank her tea and listened and tried to look as if she didn't notice.

After tea, when Rosie went to wash up her mother said, "Freddy's come all this way to see you, Rosie, Buttercup and I can do the dishes." Then she winked. Rosie rolled her eyes at her mother, but smiled, and sighed to herself, and went to talk to Freddy while Robin made her brothers laugh.

Freddy was standing nervously in the parlor, shifting from foot to foot, a small packet in his hand. "Freddy, my Mam says you've come to see me?" Rosie asked as she sat on a couch, and he sat beside her, holding out the parcel. "It was my birthday two weeks hence," he explained, handing it to her.

"Freddy, thank you!" A visit, a birthday present; Rosie propped up her smile as her heart sank within her, and opened the present to find some perfectly lovely ribbons, two each of red and blue and green. "These are beautiful. Thank you kindly."

"I'm glad you like them." His eyes fairly shone, and Rosie almost wished she were a different lass, that the look he was turning on her could please her instead of making her squirm. "I've missed you, Rosie, well, and all the Cotton family, since you moved to Bywater. I'm hoping that you'll be at this Yule's dancing."

"Yule?" Rosie had, in fact, not even thought of it, and now when she did she remembered last year's Yule, how bitterly she had missed Sam and Mr. Frodo and how she had cried herself to sleep. Not precisely the best of memories to call her to this year's dancing; besides, she knew she might always go instead to Daisy's in Overhill, to dine and sing and play with the babies. Rosie looked at the ribbons, forming the 'no' on her lips, and then looked up at Freddy's earnest face and found she couldn't say it, so she said, "I will now that I have ribbons for my hair," and watched him almost collapse with relief.

Before he could be too pleased, she carefully added, "And I'm dancing a dance with each lad, and no particular dances with any one," and watched Freddy till he nodded, and kept her hands in her lap.

Even so, three weeks later it was Yule, and Rosie stood in the decorated Hall, wearing red and green ribbons in her hair, feeling slightly queasy from the bitterroot tea her mother had forced on her despite her protests; sipping carefully at mulled cider that tasted suspiciously stretched with water and white spirits, she wondered what in all the Shire had possessed her to come down to the dancing. Feeling cold amidst all the warmth, she watched the musicians tuning on the dais, the lamps being lit and the friends and couples finding each other. Rosie watched Buttercup, blue ribbons fluttering in her hair and on her sleeves, as she ran over to Jolly, who spun her round and said something to make her laugh; she remembered spinning that way with Sam, and felt her eyes prickle. Then she reminded herself of Sam's warm smile, of his telling her that he wanted her to live and be happy, and when Freddy and Robin hailed her and came over she bit her lip to plump it and smiled. "Merry Yule," they told her, and she echoed the greeting, but a lingering scrap of wistfulness prompted her to add, "and may it be a better year than this last."

Robin was already waving to someone across the room; Freddy gave Rosie a puzzled look. _Cheer up!_ she sternly told herself, and smiled at him till he smiled back, which didn't take long.

The lamps were lit, the music began, and Rosie took a deep breath and listened, let the music flow in her ears and out to her fingers and toes and the top of her head; when Freddy held out his arm she gave him a true smile and took it, and let the music lift her feet from the floor and carry her round in the dance.

Several dances and nearly enough of the warm, weak cider later, Rosie was laughing and tossing her curls as she danced the springle-ring with Robin, trading bells and steps, when a sudden outcry at the edge of the Hall made the music break off discordantly; the dancers turned at the sound of deep coarse laughter to see a group of Men, twenty or more strong, wading into the room, shoving hobbits aside, grabbing mugs of cider in their oversized hands, laughing and joking to each other. "Hullo, rats!" called the one in the lead, the tallest and most bandy-legged. "We've come to join the party!"

The hobbits took one look at the new party guests and headed for the doors. A few hobbits stepped forward rather than back, as if to confront the Men, but they were one and all hauled away by their friends and sweethearts. Rosie, caught up in the rush towards the west door, turned to see one lone grey-haired gammer waving her arms and remonstrating as a Man picked up a punchbowl and drained it entire. "That's Widow Bunce!" she cried, starting back, and found her arms grasped by hobbits on either side of her, found herself dragged towards the door. Gasping in shock, she looked up to see Jolly at one side of her and Freddy on the other as they bore her with the crowd; unable to plant her feet beneath her, her choice was to go or to be dragged, so she went.

Once they were outside the lads let her go; Rosie jerked away from them and clutched herself, her cloak having been left inside and her arms aching from being used as handles. Rubbing her bruised arms, she glared at her self-designated rescuers as fleeing hobbits streamed around them. Freddy looked uncertain; Jolly glared right back. "What," Rosie snapped, "are you two about?"

"What do you think _you_ were about?" Jolly retorted, as Buttercup threw herself against him and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Running back in like that? D'ye not recall what our Dad said?"

"Gammer Bunce---"

"She's over there," said Robin, coming up out of the crowd. "Did you want her, Rosie? She's a bit cross at the moment; her grandsons had to carry her out, from what I saw. She was trying to give those Men what for, do you believe it?"

"So was my fool sister here," said Jolly sourly. Rosie put her hands on her hips, opening her mouth, but before she could say anything Tom arrived, hand in hand with Marigold, "It's all over the Farthing!" Marigold cried.

"What is?" asked Robin, even as Tom began chivvying them down the road. There was no telling when the Men would grow weary of wrecking the dance and emerge thirsting for more trouble, after all. "Mayor Whitfoot," Tom answered, once he was satisfied with their pace. "Will Whitfoot. He's been locked up."

"Locked up?" Rosie asked, shivering, not understanding. Tom and Marigold nodded as they each put an arm round her to drape her in their cloaks. "They've put bars and cells and locks in the storage tunnels at Michel Delving," Mari replied, "and they locked him up there."

"Locked the Mayor up?" Buttercup asked. "But why?"

"So Lotho Pimple can call himself Chief Shirrif," said Tom grimly.


	3. Rosie's Year

_ **Rosie's Year, 3/9. PG-13** _

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: Three of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Rosie/Sam, Tom/Mari, Jolly/Buttercup, Nick/Andy, others discussed  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present. So will nonexplicit violence and occasional angst, as will original characters and fleshed out "just-a-name" characters.. Also, poetry   
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.

"Rosie, what _are_ you looking at?" Rosie turned from the hall window, where she had been staring out into the sleeting New Year's Day weather, to see Marigold behind her, hands on her hips, shaking her head. "It ain't like you to moon about." Mari came to Rosie, wound a warm arm through hers, and drew her into the warmth of the kitchen. "We must have better to do than watching the slush fall," Mari said cheerfully as she sat Rosie down at the kitchen table and put a mug of tea in her hands. "Remember, as you spend your New Year's Day, so you'll spend your year!"

_That's my fear indeed,_ thought Rosie dourly, but Marigold was smiling and shining in the firelight, so she smiled in return and drank her tea. Indeed, Mari was good company, bright as her hair and cheerful as her namesake flower, chatting and singing with Rosie and sharing her chores until Tom teased her, "did you come to see me, Mari Gamgee, or my sister?" and both lasses laughed. The weather was even more dismal the next day, sleeting and snowing and raining by turns, but Buttercup and Andy struggled through to the Cottons', saying that their parents had sent them in order to have quiet, and with the company of both Buttercup and Marigold Rosie couldn't help but catch their cheer and feel a bit more like herself.

Even so, whenever the talk came near to Sam, Marigold would blink, and her smile would wobble and tilt, and then it would widen as she turned the conversation, like a dancer's spin, to something else. Rosie would notice, and it would be her turn to blink, and to swallow against an icy flare of pain, and then make her smile as bright as she could as she followed Mari's lead.

On the fourth day of the weather it warmed to clear rain. Rosie stood by her window, looking at her little rosebush wrapped in burlap against the winter's cold, and the sleeping garden beyond it, when a knock sounded at her door. "Come in," she called, and turned to see Buttercup, twisting her hands in her apron. "Rosie," she asked without preamble, "be you well?"

"Yes, of course," Rosie replied, startled. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You've looked..." Buttercup hesitated, sat down on Rosie's bed. "You've looked sad, Rosie, even when you smile. Jolly and Nick're worried for you, specially when you do fool things, like run towards those ruffians instead of away."

Surprise went to shock. Had she so clearly been grieving? "Oh." was all Rosie could say; reflexively she sat on the side of her bed, and Buttercup reached for her hand. "Nick thought you might be sad to see us, Andy and me, so sweet with him and Jolly, when your own sweetheart's gone away---" Rosie shook her head, but couldn't force her mouth to words, and Buttercup continued with that same terrible solicitude. "I thought to ask Marigold," she said, and Rosie choked with dread and pressed her free hand to her mouth, "but she's been here five days and not a word of her brother has passed between you two. So I didn't ask her."

"So you asked me," Rosie heard herself say distantly. Buttercup nodded, eyes wide and curious and caring; Rosie turned her gaze away lest she weep, looking at her hand in her lap. "I can't...I can't talk of him yet, Buttercup." _And of Mr. Frodo, like as not never._ "Nor can Mari; you were right not to ask her. But I can tell you, I ain't sad to see you with Jolly and Nick with Andy, not a whit. You Hamwich sibs are right good for the Cotton lads." Rosie raised her head, and found Buttercup smiling, and she could smile back and squeeze Buttercup's hand. "I'll be fine, Buttercup. I will."

"Good," Buttercup replied, and leaned over to squeeze her warmly; Rosie returned the embrace gratefully, the tightness in her chest relaxing. When Buttercup sat back she had a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "When you feel up to it, I think Freddy Sandheaver's sweet on you," she told Rosie, and giggled when Rosie sighed and rolled her eyes.

 

*

 

When a day finally dawned clear and bright, Rosie left the house as soon as she could after second breakfast, on the pretext of fetching the cloaks they'd left at the Hall when the Yule dancing was broken, but really just to be out for a bit. She walked with Mari to the town center, kissed her goodbye, and left her with Marroc, then headed for the Hall, wondering what she might find after those Men had finished their mischief at Yule.

From outside, the Hall looked fine, what Rosie could see of it; she couldn't see the front doors for the crowd of hobbits standing round them, apparently trying to look at something. As she drew nearer, growing curious, she heard a loud voice saying, "what we need's a body as knows his letters."

"I can read," Rosie called, and started working her way through the crowd. The voice, which she recognized as Daddy Twofoot's, called, "who's that?" and Rosie called her name back; another, rougher voice called, "and what business does your sort of lass have knowing how to read?" but Rosie was nearly to the doors by then, so she threw her head back and retorted, "d'ye want to know what's written there or not?" and some in the crowd murmured their agreement.

Daddy Twofoot held out his arm to her, bringing her up to the doors, which were chained shut and had a large bill plastered over them both. "What's it say, lass?" he asked, and Rosie tilted her chin up and read.

"By order of the Chief Shirrif, Lotho Sackville-Baggins---" Several hobbits hooted and snickered; someone in the crowd cheered ironically, and Rosie laughed, and continued. "A list of Rules to promote the order and peace of the Shire." More laughter, and Rosie snorted. "Peace of the Shire indeed. Shall I read more?" Cries of both "no" and "yes" answered her question; she glanced at Daddy Twofoot, who nodded, so she kept going.

"One: These Rules are not to be taken down nor torn up. Two: All travel must be approved at the town Shirrif-house."

"What's a Shirrif-house?" a lad in the crowd called, and another answered, "Must be the Green Dragon!" to much merriment; Rosie laughed heartily, but the next Rule chilled her and her listeners. "Three. No trespassing in Shire-buildings or Shire-lands." A sullen murmur ran through the crowd; someone near Rosie muttered, "That don't apply to those Men, seemingly," but no one said it aloud. _Are we already so cowed?_ she thought angrily, and snorted again, and turned her back on the Rules. "It looks to be a great lot of taradiddle," she said, "and I ain't reading another word of it." Much of the crowd cheered at that, and Daddy Twofoot clapped her on the arm so that her heart swelled within her and she grinned.

Then she gasped, as did many other hobbits, when a pack of Men loomed up seemingly out of nowhere. "Seen the new Rules, Shire-rats?" inquired one of the Men, as the hobbits shrank away from him, parents clutching their children, friends and sweethearts clutching each other. "I'd mark them well, if I were you, unless you want a stay in the Lockholes." Rosie's blood ran cold. "Now clear out!" He brandished a cudgel, and the crowd of hobbits scurried off in every direction. _We_ are _that cowed_, Rosie thought sadly as she hurried round the corner of the Hall.

Rosie's gloomy mood lingered as she walked home with her armful of cloaks, and it was not improved when she heard her brother Tom, shouting in the kitchen, from all the way outside the front door. She slowly hung up and smoothed the cloaks in the front hall, unwillingly listening but needing to know.

"How will I see Mari?" Tom spluttered; their father snorted and replied, "how will you run the Hobbiton farm? You'd best think on that first, lad."

"I'll not sell it!" Tom shouted; Rosie winced. "Not to _him!_"

"Tolman Cotton the Younger," their father replied coolly, and Rosie heard Tom exhale, heard silence for a moment before Tom mumbled, "Dad. I beg your pardon, Dad. I just--"

"Tom, I know." Their father's voice was gentle. "But you must see reason."

"What reason is there in doing business with Lotho Pimple?"

"More reason than in keeping a farm we can't work!"

"Dad!" Tom's ragged breathing echoed in the hallway. "Dad, how can you stand to take his gold?"

"Tom, it'll be our gold. Your gold. You might marry on it."

"Marigold would never marry me on Pimple's money, and I'd never ask." Tom stormed out of the kitchen and past Rosie without even a word, slamming the front door behind him. Rosie sighed and walked down the hall to find her father sitting at the kitchen table, head in hands, and the sight of her strong father looking so sad and weary made her want to weep. Instead, she said, "I see you heard of the new Rules, Dad."

"News came with the Post, and then Tom was sent home by the Hobbiton Shirrifs," her father replied, not looking up. "Rosie, I never did burn that offer from Lotho Pimple for the Hobbiton land. It seems we've no choice but to take it, now." He sounded as if the words tasted foul.

"Dad." Rosie's heart pounded achingly in her chest. Making her voice as gentle as she could, she let herself say, "Would you sell to him if 'twere my frock he'd tried to strip off?"

Her father merely shook his head again, not raising his eyes.

 

*

 

Rosie sat with her aching head bent over her tea, her best winter frock slowly drying in the kitchen's warmth and itching her all over as it did. Her brothers were hollering over each other as they told their mother and Buttercup of their trip to Hobbiton to sell the farm and fetch home the livestock; her father was out back splitting wood, likely picturing Lotho Pimple's face on each log.

"And the bloody cheek of those ruffians, stopping us like that!" cried Nibs, "Right in the midst of the Road!"

"Aye, but when they stared at the letter in Rosie's hand, I could have laughed," Jolly replied. "'Twas plain as day they can't read."

"I think the Shirrifs in Hobbiton were worse," said Nick, and Andy nodded beside him. "These Men, this ain't their land, they'll have to be leaving one day or another, but the Shirrifs, they're hobbits as we are! How can they do this dirty work, hold other hobbits to these damn fool Rules?"

"It's their work, is how," said Tom crossly. "Half of them took to it for the feather in the cap and the last word in any set-to, and now they have it more than ever."

"And the other half took it to keep the peace," said Stolph. "Seems to me they're still working at that, best as they can."

"They _are_ looking for more lads to become Shirrifs," Andy put in thoughtfully, only to wince when Tom turned on him so fast his chair scraped along the floor. "You heard our father, Andy Hamwich, plain as we did. Not a one of us is going to be a Shirrif and work under Lotho Pimple, and that includes you lads, you're all but family." Tom clapped Andy on the shoulder to sweeten his words, and he smiled, and so did Nick.

Stolph was a bit less mollified. "His gold is good enough to take but he's not to work for?" Tom and Rosie both went pale at that, glaring at him. "Tom's sweetheart Mari used to work for Pimple," Rosie snapped, "and you know how that ended. Don't think that because you're a lad it'd be better. It'd just be a different set of miseries."

Stolph blinked in surprise, then subsided into his tea; Tom laid a hand on Rosie's fist, and she took a deep breath and unclenched it. "Speaking of Pimple, if we must," he said to their mother, "you'd've been right proud of Rosie, Mam. She read all the papers and didn't answer his jibes and kept her head up like a queen."

"That's my lass," said their mother, as Rosie blushed and smiled and shook her head. Truth be told, she had spent the entire transaction wondering how such a piece of work, more ill-favored inside than out, was the same sort of creature as Mr. Frodo, let alone his relation. Thoughts of Mr. Frodo as she had known him, strong and slender and upright in her memory, and the rain on her head cooling her temper, had carried Rosie through all the time she and her father had been forced to spend holding Lotho Sackville-Baggins to every point of their agreement while being respectful enough that he didn't call his lounging, leering Men down on them. _That_ memory made her shudder, and her mother patted her back. "You look done in, Rosie," she said sympathetically.

"I'm all right, Mam." Rosie kissed her mother on the cheek. "'Tis just a long day for all of us."

"That it's been, my dears, and there's more work coming tomorrow." Now Mrs. Cotton's voice held a tale, and Buttercup nodded knowingly as the others leaned in to hear it. "While you were out Buttercup's mother called on us, bringing news. Master Hamwich heard down at the Post-Office that Mr. Pimple has a plan to deal with 'shortages' and 'lacks'." Her expression turned sour. "He's starting 'gathering' and 'redistribution', and his Men will come calling soon."

"Meaning as they take more and we have less." Tom nodded. "I think we've a cellar room to repair, lads."

Mrs. Cotton smiled at Tom, then at the entire table. "And the sooner the better, so early beds tonight."

 

*

 

"Jolly?" Tom called up the cellar stairs. "Jolly Cotton, ain't you done carving that door yet?" Listening to their older brother, Nick paused in setting bricks to roll his eyes, and Rosie smiled and shook her head for reply. She sat on a barrel, holding two lanterns up for Tom and Nick and Andy to see by as they worked on the cellar room; they were currently setting bricks into the broken door arch, firming it up and making it just large enough for a single hobbit to fit through.

Jolly came downstairs with the door he'd been carving. "Here 'tis, Tom, and no faster for your hollering."

"You'd've had it done yesterday, if you'd pay it half the mind you pay Buttercup," Tom retorted; Nick and Andy glanced at each other and snickered, and Rosie gave up after a moment and laughed as well. Jolly handed the door to his irate brother and joined in the laughter. "That's rich coming from you, Tom, who got not a thing done during Mari's visit."

"Yes, but I don't see her every day, Jolly. At least these two get a thing or three done between kisses," Tom replied, jerking his head towards Andy and Nick, who laughed fit to fall down.

"We'll just have to see if you're good for aught when you're married to Mari, then," Rosie teased, and Tom whipped around, looking wounded, as his sibs laughed at him before and behind. He laid down the door, folded his arms and glared at Rosie for as long as he could, which was not very, before he joined in the merriment.

Then he shook his head, and said quietly, "if she'll have me," as he picked the door up again. Rosie set down one of her lanterns to pat his arm as he passed her. "What are you on about, Tom?" she said cheerfully. "Mari will have you, if you'll but speak."

"I thought you would when she visited over Yule," Jolly said, lifting the door to the doorway to check its dimensions. Tom bent to wipe his hands, smiling and blushing. "I wanted to, but...."

"But what?" Rosie asked with kindly relentlessness. Tom shook his head. "But this last year, all the changes....I want it to be perfect when I ask."

"Oh, Tom. A lass don't want perfect, she wants to be sure." Rosie heard her own words and blinked, as she remembered the uncertainty she'd willingly borne to have Sam, and her heart ached; Tom saw the memory of Sam in her eyes, and so did Jolly. After a moment's shock, Jolly smiled broadly, opening his mouth, but before the joke could emerge to cheer them all they heard their father bellow.

Rosie jumped so that she nearly dropped the lanterns. "That was Da! Do you think---"

Another shout, in a hobbit's voice. Tom shook his head. "It ain't trouble, I don't think. Still, you all stay here, I'll go up."

"All right, o Man's Bane," Rosie teased, and Jolly grinned, but they stayed put with Nick and Andy. More shouting as Tom went up the stairs, and they recognized as Stolph the hobbit that Farmer Cotton argued with. "What could it be?" Andy asked, and the others shook their heads, puzzled.

The front door slammed distantly, and Tom returned, looking grim. "Stolph---Fastolph, has left, gone to be a Shirrif. He thinks he'll do better there than here." Tom shrugged and picked up the door. "And if he thinks so, good luck to him."

"Indeed," said Rosie, but Andy gasped, and Nick put an arm round his shoulders. "He's worked here since I was a small lad playing with the Chubbs' youngest," Andy said in shock. "I don't believe he'd leave!"

"Well, he's gone, lad, and after what our Dad said, too." Jolly patted Andy on the shoulder. "But you're staying, right?"

Nick squeezed Andy harder, and the lad smiled and nodded. "Right, Andy," Jolly said. "After all, Buttercup'd kill both of us if you quit." That got them all laughing again.

 

*

 

The Cottons didn't see Fastolph again for nearly a month. One Saturday, Rosie sat on her bed treating herself to a poem from her book. It was a difficult poem, obviously translated from some other language and written out in a square blocky hand; Rosie traced her place with a fingernail as she read. "A king he was on carven throne / In many-pillared halls of stone…"

A pounding at the front door brought her head up. Rosie slipped her book beneath her pillow, tied on her apron, cautiously walked out into the hall; she could already hear rough deep voices at the door, and her father answering in cold tones. As Rosie entered the kitchen, she saw Nibs slip into the cellar, shutting the door quietly behind him; her mother stood with a ladle in hand, looking calm till one saw how white her knuckles were. "Mam?"

"Just a visit from the Chief's Men," her mother said in a low voice. "Go back to your room, Rosie." Rosie opened her mouth; her mother's eyes narrowed, and she shut it again and turned to go, but it was already too late. Footsteps were coming down the hall, and a loud voice bellowed, "and you'd best not hide any one or anything!" Rosie looked at her mother, who pulled her close, an arm round her shoulders.

Farmer Cotton came into the kitchen, face pale, lips pressed into a thin angry line. He was accompanied by two Shirrifs, one of them a very uncomfortable-looking Fastolph Chubb, and two Men with cudgels in their hands, who bumped their heads on the ceiling and swore. "Good morning, Mrs. Cotton," said the other Shirrif, a hobbit of light-brown hair and middle years who was obviously striving to be professional. He paused for her reply, but she merely looked down her nose at him, so he continued, "We're here gathering goods for central distribution."

"Indeed," said Mrs. Cotton coolly, holding her daughter with one arm and her ladle in the other hand. The Shirrif sighed and turned away. "Right, then. A couple of sacks of flour and a barrel of pipeweed should do it."

"Oh, I think they can give more," said one of the Men, looking around the kitchen as if he owned it. "This here's a comfy-looking rathole, it is." When his roving eyes lit on Rosie they gleamed, and she felt herself wanting to shrink behind her mother and hide; she made herself stand firm and set her chin, and he laughed. "Ah, this little bint's got fire in her eyes!" he crowed. "P'raps we should bring her with us?" He reached down with a huge dirty hand, but suddenly Farmer Cotton and Fastolph were both standing before her. Rosie's father had his mouth open already, but he glanced at Fastolph, and shut his mouth as if it pained him to do it; Fastolph gave him a small nod and stepped forward, looking at the Man as he said, "that ain't what we came for."

The Man growled, and muttered "garn!" and spat on the kitchen floor as he turned away. Rosie realized she was shaking, and that her mother was shaking worse, her fingers digging into Rosie's shoulder hard enough to bruise. "Finish your business," said Farmer Cotton, still standing before his wife and daughter, "and go. Thank you kindly."

"We'll go when we've a mind to," retorted the other Man, lifting a wheel of cheese. "And this is just a bit of your share." Laden with barrels and sacks, the Men finally left; the Shirrifs left behind them, tipping their hats to the Cottons as they went. Fastolph paused for a moment, looking back at Rosie; Farmer Cotton took a step forward, and Stolph smiled sadly and went, Farmer Cotton two steps behind to see them out.

When they heard the front door shut, Rosie and her mother finally relaxed, sagging against each other; Rosie put her hand under her mother's arm and guided her to a chair, but her mother wouldn't let go of her arms. "Mam, you could use some tea," Rosie said, but her mother merely shook her head and clung to her.

"Sit down, Rose. I'll put the tea on." Rosie's father returned, wiping his hands with a handkerchief as if he could scrub off the morning's encounter; he dropped the handkerchief on the spittle on the floor, swiped with his foot, and kicked it into the hearth fire. Rosie sat beside her mother and put an arm round her, while her mother held her other hand and breathed deeply as her shaking quieted. Rosie's father put the kettle on and continued out to the mud-room to rinse his feet, then came back and sat on Rosie's other side, laying a hand on her hair. "Oh, Lily. Rose. I'm sorry for that."

"You ain't the one sending ruffians round to take hobbits' hard-earned goods," said Rosie's mother, her voice shaking. Rosie thought she might shake again, too, to see her parents so afraid. Her father reached across to stroke her mother's cheek till she looked up at him and managed a smile. "Lily," he said, and she kissed his hand, and Rosie blinked to see her parents so tender in front of her.

Then he brought his hand to Rosie's curls again, stroked them twice, laid his hand to her shoulder. It was the shoulder her mother had clutched, and Rosie winced. "Next time, Rosie, I'll send one of the lads to warn you, so you can stay in your room."

"Yes, Dad," Rosie agreed. Part of her misliked the thought of being shut away like the goods in the back cellar room, but a larger part misliked far more that Man's glittering eyes and huge dirty hands. Her father nodded and looked past her to her mother again. "Next time, Lily, they're not coming in," he said, and Rosie smiled, but her mother shook her head ruefully. "Tolman, you can't say that, and I'll not have you hurt holding to it." He opened his mouth to object, and she reached across Rosie to touch his lips, and he shut his mouth again. "The kettle's boiling," he said gruffly, getting out of his chair. "And someone should fetch Nibs back up." Rosie and her mother smiled at that, and he paused to look at them and to return the smile.

 

*

 

Unfortunately, their day was not done yet. A couple of hours later, Rosie was working in the kitchen when the front door opened to admit sobbing hobbits. Not wanting to disturb her mother, who was lying down, she went to investigate, and discovered Andy and Buttercup holding each other up and crying.

Rosie felt a sudden heavy weariness. Didn't they have enough troubles without taking on the Hamwiches' too? Then she looked into Andy and Buttercup's red eyes, and held her arms out, and her weariness was chased out by pity and worry as Buttercup ran to her, Andy just behind. "Shhh," she said, getting them both down the hall into the kitchen. _If this keeps up, I'll grow to hate tea_, she thought wryly as she settled them at the table. "Shhh. What's the trouble, me dears?"

"Our Da, he's lost his position!" Buttercup sobbed, and scrubbed her face with a dilapidated handkerchief; Andy took up the story, fists clenched on the table, tears running down his face. "That Mr. Pimple, he's turned all the Post to Quick Post, and let go any postman as couldn't work so. Our Da's not well, and he's can't run, and he's not got a pony, so he can't do Quick Post."

Rosie patted their shoulders, sad for them but surprised at their tears; Buttercup's next words made her understand and suck in her breath in sympathy. "Da should have been paid yesterday, and wasn't, and when he went today to ask he was told there's no pay for lazy old hobbits as can't work! A half month's pay Mr. Lotho didn't give him! And one of those horrid Men knocked him down!"

Andy nodded. "Da's got as bad a shiner as I've ever seen, worse than the one Jolly had after that fight, and he ain't strong like Jolly. He's home in bed now, and Mam's weeping, and there's naught we can do, so, we, well, came here." He looked up at Rosie, brown eyes wide and beseeching, as if she could make it better. She kissed his brow like an elder sister, and went to refill the teakettle; Nibs wandered by the kitchen then, took one look at Andy and Buttercup, and set off through the mudroom door without even taking his cloak. He returned with Nick and Jolly, who went to their sweethearts, and Rosie stood by the table and watched them and worried.

 

*

 

Ordinarily, Rosie had always loved Spring, second only to Lithe as her favorite time of year, but this year even the land's awakening couldn't raise her heavy heart for very long. Farmer Cotton responded to the Hamwiches' misfortune by raising their pay and giving them a basket of food every week, and Andy and Buttercup responded by working harder yet, till Rosie worried they might drop. At least they were doing something, as opposed to their thin pale mother, who mostly wept her gratitude over cups of tea, saying that without the Cottons they'd be reduced to eating boiled thistles. Rosie saw her mother nod acceptance and give her another cup of tea, while thinking so obviously Rosie could all but hear it, 'you might do a bit to help your hardworking children'.

Even feeding the Hamwiches as they were, the Cottons were still doing well, but not so well as to have naught to worry about. In March the Men returned for more "redistribution", and this time they sent the Shirrifs down into the cellar; Fastolph was with them this time as well, and when the others had left he knocked on Rosie's door. "Hullo?" she called fearfully, ready to push her chest against it to brace it, before reflecting that one of the Men would likely not knock.

"Rosie?" called Fastolph, and she cried, "Stolph!" with relief and had opened the door before she even remembered he was no longer a friend. She did remember when he went to embrace her, and took a step back, folding her hands together, not inviting him in. "How do you, Shirrif Chubb?"

"I liked 'Stolph' better," he said with a sigh. "I just came to see how you're keeping." He looked as if he would say more, but Tom had come up the hall behind him; Rosie opened her mouth to tell Tom not to lay hands on him lest he end up in the Lockholes, but Tom kept his wits, merely folding his arms with a small growl. "Good day, Shirrif Chubb," he said, with that firm cool voice he'd learned from their father, and Fastolph looked from Rosie to Tom and back again, and sighed. "I'm your friend," he said helplessly.

"I'm keeping fine, and I thank you kindly for coming to see," Rosie said more warmly; Tom raised an eyebrow at her. "Still, you ought to be on your way. There's more 'gathering' to be done." Her voice couldn't help but harden on those words. Fastolph sighed again, and went, and Tom looked at her and shook his head, then followed to see him out.

When Tom returned, it wasn't with the scolding she was bracing for, but with a kind smile and a dish of strawberries and cream. "You look as if you could use a bite," he said, and she hugged him gratefully. "Thank you, Tom, and thank you for not bawling me out."

"For talking to our Shirrif Chubb?" Tom snorted, but smiled at Rosie. "He did come to see how you're keeping, 'twas only polite." Rosie looked down at the dish of strawberries, and suddenly had a dizzying flash of memory, of popping a strawberry into Sam's mouth, that brought tears to her eyes. "Oh, I wish Sam were here, that Mr. Frodo had never gone away," Rosie sighed; she heard herself, whining like a child, and made a face, but Tom put his arm round her shoulders and squeezed her comfortingly. "We all do, Rosie, we all do."

 

*

 

After elevenses, Rosie stood at her window looking at her rosebush sadly. It had fared badly over the winter, needing quite a bit of pruning, and even this late in March it still looked like a bundle of dead sticks, some tiny buds and a few scant leaves the only evidence of life. She sighed, shaking her head, not wanting to uproot the rosebush Sam had planted for her, but not seeing much choice.

_Sam._

The thought of him was like a physical blow, rocking her back on her heels, but with joy rather than pain. Rosie gasped and looked up at the sky, full of light, and thought of Sam, his smile and his warm hands and how the light caught in his hair, and suddenly her heart was filled with hope, glowing and swelling within her. She put her hands on the windowsill and looked up into that bright spring sky, and the joy filling her surged out to the ends of her fingers and her toes and up out of her mouth in a song she'd never heard before.

"_In western lands beneath the Sun/The flowers may rise in Spring,  
The trees may bud, the waters run,/The merry finches sing.  
Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night/And swaying beeches bear  
The Elven-stars as jewels white/Amid their branching hair._"

"Rosie!" The song broke off; Rosie turned to see her mother standing in the doorway, arms folded. "Quiet, lass! There's ruffians about!" Even so, her eyes twinkled, and Rosie shook her head, so full of the sudden fey hope she barely felt the floor beneath her feet. "Oh, let them come, Mam, let them come! Their time will soon be over." Her mother stared at her as if she were daft; wanting to reassure her, Rosie continued more quietly, but still with certainty, "Sam's coming back."

"Rosie? But he's been gone---" Plain as if spoken, she could hear her mother thinking, _my lass, have you cracked?_; she smiled and held her hands out, and her mother took them. "He's coming back," Rosie repeated, sure of it as of her own name.

"Oh, Rosie." Her mother shook her head, but smiled all the same. "Oh, lass. Well, be that as it may, but right now there are ruffians about, so if you're going to be singing, come help me scrub in the back rooms where you won't be heard."

"All right, Mam." Rosie let herself be led out of her room, but as she went she turned her head for one more glimpse of that bright sky, and beneath it the rosebush waved in a passing breeze, and she couldn't help but smile.

Two years later to the day, Rosie would be leaning wearily against Sam's shoulder, and they and Daisy would have run through all the songs the three of them knew, when Sam would softly begin singing "in Western lands…"; Rosie would remember, and smile, and return with renewed strength to her task.


	4. Rosie's Year

_ **Rosie's Year, 4/9. PG-13** _

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: Four of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Rosie/Sam, Tom/Mari, Jolly/Buttercup, Nick/Andy, others discussed  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present. So will nonexplicit violence and occasional angst, as will original characters and fleshed out "just-a-name" characters.. Also, poetry   
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.

Rosie's newfound surety was soon and sorely tested. In early April, Freddy Sandheaver came to call, by himself this time, with a feather in his cap and a package beneath his arm. Rosie's father gave him a sidelong look, but her mother smiled as she ushered him and Rosie into the parlor.

"Hullo, Freddy," said Rosie neutrally, hands folded in her lap; Freddy gave her a bright smile. "It's good to see you, Rosie."

"And you, Freddy. How did you come by here? Idle travel's not allowed under the Rules, I hear." Freddy's smile widened at the question, as if he didn't notice Rosie's coolness, but then he seemed to have enough warmth for them both. "Oh, I'm a Shirrif now!" he said cheerfully, pointing to his cap. "I can travel as I like. I would have come by before, but I've been busy."

_My luck then,_ she thought, and shushed herself. "Yes, you must be busy. Shirrifs have much work these days."

"Indeed, there are more Rules to keep folk to, and Redistribution to organize, and an awful mess of disagreements to calm down." Freddy chatted on about his duties as a Shirrif, and Rosie politely listened, thinking ruefully of all the weeding and collecting she'd intended to do that day. After a moment or three of this woolgathering she shook herself and smiled more honestly at Freddy, reminding herself that it wasn't his fault he wasn't the lad she wanted. _It is his fault he's gone and become a Shirrif, with what they do now,_ said a voice in the back of her head, but for the moment she ignored it.

Freddy held out his gift; it looked ominously large. "What's this, Freddy?" Rosie asked as she took it; it was heavy, too. Freddy merely grinned, so she unwrapped it, and found an exceedingly large loaf of sugar. "Sugar's dear these days," he explained, "and it's sweet, like you."

With an effort, Rosie did not roll her eyes. "Thank you, Freddy," she said as sincerely as she could. "I have much preserving to do, it'll come in right handy." She wrapped up the sugar and laid it aside; he immediately reached for her hands, and his own were trembling and damp. "Rosie, Rosie Cotton," Freddy said, leaning forward. "I've come to ask you sommat important."

_Here 'tis,_ Rosie thought with weary relief. "What would you ask me, Freddy?"

He took a deep breath. "I've missed you, Rosie. I've missed you since Yule. Dancing with you was the finest ever." Rosie recalled Yule rather differently, but held her tongue. "You're a fine lass, fair and full of spirit, and I'd like it, very much, if you'd wed me."

Rosie looked into Freddy's eager face and sighed and closed her eyes; she _had_ entangled him beyond his peace after all. When she opened her eyes he looked puzzled; she winced and shook her head. "Thank you, kindly, Freddy, but no."

"No?" Freddy echoed disbelievingly. "No? But, Rosie, you're of age and you're fair and you haven't a lad, why not me?" She shook her head, trying to reclaim her hands, but he clutched them. "Why not?"

"Freddy, Freddy, please. Please let go of me." He shook his head, his fingers dented hers; Rosie winced and tugged. "Freddy!"

"Rosie, I can't see it. Why not wed me? Is it Sam Gamgee? I don't mind if you love him."

Rosie could stand Freddy's hurting her, but not this outrageous generosity. "You don't mind?" she cried, so indignantly that Freddy startled, then clutched her wrists so that she yelped. "Freddy Sandheaver, d'ye think to make me love you by force? Is that what you've learned as a Shirrif?"

That made him blink, and let go, and sit back; Rosie chafed her aching hands and scooted away from him. "Freddy, I love Sam, and I'll wait for him till he comes back."

"And if he never comes back, Rosie?" She had never seen such a glittering-eyed glare on Freddy's face; it made her heart ache far worse than her hands. "Will you spend all your nights in a cold empty bed?"

_If elsewise your bed, then yes,_ Rosie did not say; it wouldn't help that glare off his face nor him out of the parlor. "Thank you kindly, Fredegar Sandheaver, but I can't take this gift." She held out the sugar-loaf, but he stood, still glaring at her, and straightened his weskit. "Keep the sugar," he snapped, and left.

Rosie held her breath and listened till she heard the front door slam, along with a surprised grunt from one of her brothers. She looked at the sugar, and did not throw it into the fireplace. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, picked up the sugar and carried it into the kitchen, put it on the table, sat down, and began to weep.

"Rosie!" her mother bustled over to lay a hand on her shoulder and press a handkerchief into her hand. "Did you and Freddy have a falling-out?"

Rosie hiccupped, and laughed bitterly, and cried harder. "It'd seem so," her father observed.

"'Tis a pity, he's a nice lad," said her mother. Rosie shook her head, crying too hard to reply, but her father patted her other shoulder as he answered, "Aye he may be, but Rosie don't want him, and it's her choosing, not ours."

Rosie scrubbed at her eyes and gave her father a grateful look; her mother snorted and shook her head. "She's near thirty-five, Tolman."

"Which ain't an old maid. She'll be fine, Lily."

Rosie drew a deep breath and managed to say, "She's sitting right here." Her parents laughed, and she managed to laugh with them, and felt a little better.

 

*

 

Rosie sat slumped over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, her basket forgotten in the corner, Buttercup shaking in the next chair beside her. Now Rosie was a fair lass, and knew it, but her parents had always taught her pretty was as pretty does, and her brothers were always there to keep her head from swelling. This bright day, for the first time in her life or nearly, she found herself wishing she were plain; poor Buttercup, even more shaken, had said as much, scrubbing at her face as if she could push the bloom from it.

That morning, the lasses had gone out together, to run a few errands and visit a friend or three. It had been Rosie's birthday the week before, so they gave out a few small gifts and collected many hugs and kisses, and overall had such a bright day that Rosie, not wanting to end it, had asked Buttercup to come back to the Cottons' with her. Buttercup had agreed, and they'd walked singing down a sunlit road through a spring afternoon that seemed a world away from all the recent Troubles.

Then a Man stepped out into the Road ahead of them, and leered, and his shadow fell across them as if he blotted out the Sun; clutching Buttercup's hand, Rosie's first thought, chide herself as she might for it, was to be glad that she wasn't alone with him.

"Just forget what that ruffian said, my dears," Rosie's mother advised them, holding their hands, but how could Rosie forget his glittering eyes and snaggletoothed grin, forget how he'd speculated, "little chits like you, bet you'd be tight in the tupping, eh?", how his laughter had echoed behind them as they fled, as if he could catch them if he but chose to bestir himself? Rosie nodded dumbly, and tried to comfort herself with a thought of Sam, but the only face that came to her mind was that Man's, and all the others like him swarming over the Shire.

Across the table sat Rosie's father, lips a tight line. "It ain't right," he said in a quiet firm voice. "It ain't right for lasses to not even be able to walk the paths of their own town. It ain't right, these Men, coming in as if they own our land, own our goods, own us. It ain't right."

"What's to be done?" asked Rosie's mother wearily. "Rally the Hobbitry-in-arms? The Thain's too busy digging in to protect the Tookland, the best he's done is to shoot a ruffian or three."

"Even the Thain can't raise the whole Shire himself," replied Rosie's father, and the note in his voice made her look up at him. "But if sturdy hobbits would rise, he'll have sommat to work with."

"_Tolman_." Rosie's mother flicked her gaze to the lasses; he looked at them as if just seeing them there, and after a moment smiled reassuringly and reached out to pat their hands. "It will be well," he said, and Rosie nodded, knowing full well it wouldn't. "For now, we'll send the lads with you on errands. At any rate, there's much to do in the house and farm, isn't there, Lily?"

"That there is, but the doing can wait. You could both use a rest." Rosie's mother got the unresisting girls up from the table, led Rosie to her room and took Buttercup on down the hall to the guest-room. Rosie lay down on her bed fully dressed, bodice laced and all, found her book with one hand. Looking out the window at her rosebush, now covered in little dark green leaves and swelling buds, holding the book, Rosie was finally able to put the Man's leering face from her mind; she turned to the front of the book, and traced Mr. Frodo's writing with her fingertip, bringing him and then Sam to mind. _Do you know what's being done to your Shire?_ she thought, and closed the book, and closed her eyes.

 

*

 

Rosie used the sugar for preserving. The bees in the garden and orchard hives were working hard, but it was still a bit early for honey harvest, while the garden was growing as if to make up for Lotho's depredations, so full of flowers and leaves and life that Rosie and her mother took to just sitting in it and breathing in the flowers' perfumes and forgetting for a moment or three the dark present days.

Only for a moment, though; then they always rose and returned to work. With food getting scarcer and sugar especially dear, honey and preserves traded well, so they strove to put up all the garden and the bees gave them. Still, it was pleasant work, picking in the sunshine, hanging herbs to dry in the shady back rooms, filling the house with sweet scents, stacking the finished jars in the back cellar room or in baskets. Rosie made some oak-gall ink and proudly labeled each jar with its contents and her and her mother's names; the jars she was proudest of were the small red pots of rose-petal preserve made from the lovely white-dipped-in-red petals off of Sam's rosebush.

When Rosie's brothers returned from trading they brought not only goods but news. The Men had begun turning hobbits out of their holes "in the name of the Chief and for the use of the Shire", as Nick recited sourly. Just in time for this, a Rule appeared that hobbits might only house their families and employees. Some hobbits were already stranded, and it was a troubling question as to what would happen when winter came.

One morning Tom came home at a run, got the wagon, and set out again so fast he was a blur. He returned at tea-time with three bedsteads and five straw mattresses, all piled pell-mell, and the poor ponies looking exhausted. "Young Tom," called their mother from the top of the steps, "what have you there?"

"Beds for the back rooms, Mam!" Tom looked quite proud of himself; Rosie came down to unhitch the ponies and wondered to herself if her brother had cracked. "The Neatfoots've gone with Mrs. Neatfoot's brother, and they sold their furniture, and you'd talked of having us build some beds, so..."

Rosie's mother blinked and then laughed. "That's my quick lad!" she said proudly, coming down the steps to kiss him on his brow. As Rosie stabled the ponies and fed them old apples she heard her mother rounding up her brothers to carry the beds in. Jolly made jokes about firewood, but now they had four spare beds all told, and even extra mattresses. As Tom told his father over supper, "Rules or no, we could help folks, and in happier days we'll have guests, won't we?"

"May those happier days come, lad," replied their father, as he patted Tom's shoulder.

 

*

 

By May Rosie had taken to spending her free moments sitting by her window and looking up into the sky, remembering the day it had shone above her and her heart had shone with joy. She itched to wander down the Road to see friends, to take a trip up to Overhill to see Daisy and Mari; however, it wasn't safe, as she saw nearly every day when Men strolled up the Road, laughing and swinging their cudgels. So she went no further afield than the garden and the orchard, and read tales from her book in the mornings, and pushed her wanderlust into aiding Tom. He'd heard down at the Green Dragon that travel could be eased by a coin or three in the right Shirrif's hand; the price was far too high for them to have kept the Hobbiton farm, but it did well for a visit every few weeks to Overhill and Hobbiton, to see Mari and check on Gaffer Gamgee for her. So Rosie did up his pack for him, including gifts from the garden and the farm, and sewed the cloth Daisy and Mari sent with him on his return into clothes for them all, and struggled not to envy him.

Which was rather more than Nibs and Nick did, complaining of not being able to go. Their parents told them that they had no reason, with Nick's sweetheart in Bywater, and that Tom was the eldest and steadiest; the lads replied with elaborate pouting that went on for days, and Rosie watched it all and laughed behind her hand. Besides, Tom brought back news, much of it unfortunate but still useful. A group of Men had settled at Waymoot, destroying the trees there to build themselves horrid tarred shacks, and terrorizing all the neighboring villages, including Overhill; hardly any hobbits went out anymore besides older children and older folk, as tween lads and lasses alike were in danger of being harassed and molested. "Daisy and Mari're more shut in than you," Tom said sadly to Rosie, who squeezed his hand. How, then, could she begrudge them the occasional visit from Tom?

Meanwhile, Rosie's dad and Jolly and sometimes the younger lads went down to the Green Dragon and the Ivy Bush of evenings; the ale was getting shorter, and the tales of theft and hassle and even outright assault were getting longer, but Rosie could tell by her Da's face when he came home that no one would actually put their hands where their mouths were and join him in rising up against the self-styled Chief and his Men. She looked at him, and looked at her mother, and didn't say anything.

One bright June day Tom came home at elevenses, looking disgruntled. "I thought you were off on one of your holidays," said Nibs thoughtlessly, and Tom actually lunged at him so that Jolly and Nick had to leap from their seats and catch him. "Tom Cotton!" cried their mother, coming round the table. "What's got into you?"

"They're not letting me go, Mam!" Jolly and Nick deposited Tom on his feet, not least because he looked cross enough to possibly take them both on. "The Shirrifs won't let me travel to Hobbiton again, let alone Overhill. They say the Rules have got stricter."

Everyone sucked in their breath at that news. "Oh, Tom, I'm sorry," said Nibs, and Tom let out a long breath and smiled at his brother. "I know, Nibs. I'm sorry I nearly clouted you, but, well..."

"You didn't need a tease right then." Their mother laid a hand on Tom's arm. "I'm sorry too, my lad." Tom folded his arms tighter, his hands clenching. "How will I see my Mari now?" he asked, and no one had an answer for him.

He made his own answer, however. That night, Rosie woke to darkness and an insistent scratching at her bedroom door; she clambered out of bed, groped for her robe, and settled for wrapping the sheet round herself as she opened the door, to find Tom with grass in his hair and a ridiculous grin on his face. "Hullo, Rosie," he said, voice loud in the nighttime smial.

"Tom! Hush!" Rosie pulled him into the room where she could see him by the starlight through her window. "Where've you been? You're grinning like a tween."

"To Overhill." He sat down on the chest rather wearily, but still grinning so that he nearly glowed. "She said yes, Rosie, she said yes!"

"Of course she said yes," Rosie replied, rubbing her eyes, before the full impact of his words hit her. "You walked to Overhill and back, tonight? With all those Men about?"

"I told Mari I'd see her today," said Tom, and Rosie couldn't help but smile as she sat beside her brother and took his hands. "And I did. And I asked her to wed me, and she said yes."

"Took you long enough!" Rosie threw her arms round him. "Oh, well done, Tom, well done. But you should go to bed, the night's almost gone."

Tom nodded, but returned her squeeze for a long moment before he let go. "Mari sends her love to you," he told Rosie, "and I had to tell someone afore I could sleep." He looked up out the window, at the rosebush and the stars. "Overhill's not so far, less'n ten miles, but right now it seems far as the Moon."

Rosie thought of how far away Sam must be, and Mr. Frodo if he still lived; Tom looked at her and saw the thought in her face, and squeezed her again. "I should hush. And Mari wants to wed me, that's all I could wish for."

"And a finer sister by marriage I could never wish for." Rosie couldn't help but smile.

 

*

 

That morning their father took one look at Tom, smiled broadly, and sent him back to his bed; that made more chores for the rest of them, but for such good news they didn't mind. Even so, Rosie looked out across the Road as she carried pails of milk to the springhouse, and wanted to be out and about for even one day. After supper she asked her father if a couple of the lads could be spared to go with her to pick brambleberries; he looked at her as if he'd rather she didn't go, but said yes, and Nick and Andy didn't object to the trip, and letting Tom do their chores, at all.

So, two days hence they took six baskets, one filled with elevenses and the other five waiting for brambleberries, and set out. Nick and Andy sang together as they walked, but, remembering her last time on the Road, Rosie couldn't be quite so cheerful, spending her time looking about. On their way they passed two Men cutting down a lovely tall beech tree, and that stopped the singing; Nick opened his mouth when he saw, and Andy and Rosie grabbed his arms and tugged him along before the Men took notice of them, so they were a good ways away when Nick finally asked, "what're they doing that for?"

"What cause do they do anything for?" Rosie replied. "Come on, we're nearly there." When they arrived at the Bramble Banks they found several neighbors, if fewer than they might have seen in past years; still, they spent a cheerful sunlit morning picking berries, and at elevenses everyone shared and praised Rosie's violet jam till her cheeks turned as red as her namesake flower. When they set out for home with all six baskets full of berries Rosie was singing along with the lads.

Then they rounded a bend in the Road, and found five Shirrifs and Ted Sandyman, lounging and smoking. Nick stepped around to the front and they kept steadily walking, but when the group spotted them Ted jumped up to stand in their way and a couple of the Shirrifs followed. Rosie regarded them with narrowed eyes; they were all new Shirrifs, and the only one she knew was Fastolph Chubb, who stood to the back with a sour look on his face.

"Hullo, Master Sandyman," said Nick, "ain't you got a Mill to be running?"

"I'm a friend o'the Chief's," Sandyman replied, puffing out his chest like a rooster about to crow, and Rosie's heart sank; she laid a hand on Nick's shoulder to remind him not to start trouble. "I can do as I please. And this here's a Toll Road."

"Is that so?" replied Nick, fists clenching round the basket's handles, but his tone was even. "And what would the Toll be, so's we might go on home and not stand idle in the Road?"

Ted grinned, and so did the Shirrifs nearest him. The other three, to their credit, looked ill. "A basket of berries and a kiss from your pretty sister there."

Rosie's stomach heaved, and Andy growled behind her; feeling Nick's shoulder tense beneath her hand, she dug her fingers in. Facing down Sandyman wasn't worth a thrashing, and these days, he'd likely end up in the Lockholes. "And what call have you to ask a kiss of me, Sandyman?" she retorted, head held high, but he had lads behind him, he was in his element, and he grinned all the wider. "Those're the terms," he insisted. "Or we arrest you lot for disturbin' the peace, and seize the berries."

Rosie sighed, and stepped around Nick; he caught her wrist, and she smiled at him with reassurance she didn't feel and patted his shoulder. Andy came up beside him, and she handed him the larger of her two baskets, bringing Sandyman the smaller one. His two Shirrifs guffawed and elbowed each other as he grinned at her and grabbed her upper arms. "Sam's lass," he gloated. "But he ain't here now, is he?" Rosie set her quivering jaw, and stared back up at him, and he jerked her in and mashed his mouth to hers.

Well, she hadn't expected it to be pleasant, but he kept working his mouth over hers, trying to convince her to part her lips, until she had to clench her toes on the cobbles of the Road to keep her foot from rising to kick him. He began sliding his hands up her arms, as if he would sink them into her hair, and she made a protesting noise and tried to pull back, and he chuckled in his throat.

"That's enough, Ted." An arm pushed between them; Fastolph's arm, and he stood beside them glaring at Sandyman, who merely grinned that infuriating grin as he uncurled his fingers from Rosie's shoulders, one by one. She jerked out of his grasp, scrubbed her mouth and face with her handkerchief, straightened her sleeves and stepped backwards towards Nick and Andy, who came up beside her. "I thought you ain't sweet on her no more?" Sandyman retorted to Fastolph, who clenched his fist but pulled his arm back to fold it across his chest, repeating "that was enough."

"That's your berries and your kiss," said Rosie, cursing her voice for shaking and her cheeks for flaming, but keeping her head up. "And that's our way you're still standing in." Sandyman and his two Shirrifs grinned, and the other two shook their heads, and Stolph looked sad, but didn't say anything. They parted a bit, and Rosie and Nick and Andy hurried through and took to their heels as soon as they could.

No one said anything till they were nearly home; then Rosie glanced up and noticed the lads' white faces. Halting them, she patted Nick on his shoulder. "Thank you, Bowman," she said, using his given name as their mother might have.

"Thank me for what, Rose?" Nick still trembled beneath her hand, his face still pale and downcast. "For what? I wasn't a lick of use, I couldn't stop him. You should rail at me."

"You could be on your way to the Lockholes now. We all could. But you held your hand, and you did too, Andy. You kept your heads, my lads. Thank you both." Rosie pulled them in and held them until their shaking eased a bit. "You remembered what Dad told us."

"I don't know if he meant it for when a ruffian and his popinjays lay hands on my sister," said Nick sullenly, still not looking her in the eye; Andy leaned reassuringly against his side, and Rosie took a steadying breath. "Most of all then," she said, and Nick finally looked up. "I'd not be any better off if we were arrested. None of us would. Besides, 'twas just a kiss." Her shudder belied the last words, and Nick put his arm round her.

"D'ye think Stolph would've let us be arrested?" Andy asked, shoving them gently to get them moving again. Nick snorted. "He let that lot do as they pleased."

Rosie shook her head. "He did what he could. At any rate, we're home now. I suppose I'll be home for awhile," she said ruefully, looking up at the front door.

When they got in, Rosie let the lads bring in the berries, while she drew her mother aside. On the trudge home she'd thought of not telling her, not telling any of her family, and had realized it wouldn't work. "Mam, we lost a basket," she said, and told of their trip home as her mother's arm tightened round her shoulders.

When she was done, her mother held her and stroked her hair. "You're not going out again for awhile," she said.

"I know, Mam." Rosie folded her arms round herself and told herself there were no bars on the windows, no matter how much she felt them. "It ain't Nick and Andy's fault. They were outmatched."

"It ain't your fault either, Rose." She looked up at that, and her mother was smiling, if sadly. "You are fair, but that gives no one call nor cause to force you to anything, to lay hands on you. Those new Shirrifs are abusing their place, and they know it, and the Sandymans have been louts three generations running." Rosie nodded, feeling a great knot undo within her that she hadn't realized was there. "Thank you, Mam," she whispered, and now, of all moments, was when her eyes began to prickle. "Oh, Mam." Rosie bit her lip, but the tears were building, and her mother saw them and stroked her hair again. "The Men are bad enough, but what will become of the Shire if hobbits turn against hobbits? We'll never be free." That was all she managed before she buried her face in her mother's shoulder and wept in earnest.

 

*

 

A few days later, Rosie's father set out for the Green Dragon, and came home again unexpectedly early and quite noisily; hearing her father shouting amid deep coarse laughter, she ran out to the kitchen, but Buttercup caught her before she could head to the hall, and shook her head silently as she drew Rosie into the parlor. There they could hear through the window the altercation on the front steps.

Rosie hadn't heard her father so angry in years. "Let me go! I could thrash the lot of you!" A thud, and more laughter. "Yes, you could," came a smooth, self-satisfied gentlehobbit's voice, and Rosie's heart stuttered in her chest as recognized that voice, as she clutched Buttercup's hand. "But then it'd be the Lockholes for you, my good hobbit." Rosie heard her father growl, but say nothing. "And who would watch over your passel of lads, your fair round wife, and that pretty lass of yours?" Buttercup turned wide eyes on Rosie. "Yes, Farmer Cotton, I remember you and your litter. You've the daughter who can read well above her station, don't you? I could use a secretary who's so easy to look at." His laugh was high and nasal above the Men's deep guffaws.

Rosie's father's voice was tight and cold, but controlled again. "She don't need a position. Thank you _kindly_. There's plenty of work here."

"Then you shouldn't be idling in inns, should you? Stay home, Cotton, and keep out of trouble. Next time, the Lockholes." The laughter trailed off, down the Road; Rosie peeped over the windowsill and saw four Men heading off down it, and at their head Lotho Pimple riding on a pony and wearing a wide cap with several feathers in it. Then Rosie turned away, hearing her parents coming down the hall, and it was her turn to catch Buttercup, because she could hear her mother weeping. "Tolman, Tolman," Rosie's Mam repeated between sobs. "Tolman, I might never have seen you more."

"Shh, Lily, it's all right. It's all right. I'm safe, I'm here." Rosie heard them go down the hall to their bedroom, her mother weeping the whole way; when they'd shut their door she emerged from the parlor, feeling shaken head to toe.

Andy met them in the hall, all Rosie's brothers but Tom with him. "Rosie! Buttercup! They've closed all the inns!"

"What?" Rosie led everyone into the kitchen and fetched some barley-water, it being too hot for tea and there being no ale in the house. "All the inns?"

"Every one," Jolly confirmed, too shocked for joking. "Nibs and I were at the Ivy Bush when a great squad of Men came and told us all to clear out or face the Lockholes; Pimple don't hold with beer nor idleness, they said, so the inns are closed. When we looked back they were pasting a notice on the door and tossing the staff out on their ears, poor lads."

"Andy'n I met Jolly and Nibs on the way home," said Nick, looking shaken as Rosie felt; Tom appeared in the doorway and stood quietly to listen. "We're at the Dragon with Dad, when our Chief Pimple himself graced that one. He said he wanted a word with Da, and his Men patted their cudgels. Da made us go on home. I'm worried after him." Andy nodded, putting his arm round Nick.

"Da's here," Rosie said, glancing at Buttercup, who nodded. "We heard him come in. He's with Mam."

"So, Pimple's closed the inns," said Tom slowly, coming to sit at the table, "and between the Shirrifs and the Men not a hobbit will stir from their hole. The Thain's dug in; so's Brandy Hall. We're as pinned as rabbits in burrows. How will we ever shake these ruffians off now?"

To that, none of them had any answer.

 

*

 

Lithe, of course, was not danced that year, not with travel forbidden and the Party Field owned by the Sackville-Bagginses. Sitting out in the orchard at dusk with his sibs, Jolly pinched his nose and did a very funny imitation of Miz Lobelia's likely reaction to being asked to host "unseemly drunken carousing", before tugging Buttercup up and trotting off with a wink to the fields. Nick and Andy looked at each other, and Tom and Rosie laughed and shooed them off to go dance their Lithe as well.

After a moment, a nightingale began singing, as blue and silver quiet descended upon the orchard. Tom and Rosie sat together and sipped hard cider and just breathed for awhile, listening to the stars and the wind and the nightingale, and some giggles in the distance from one or the other couple. At length, Tom whispered, "you must miss Sam."

"And you must miss Mari." Rosie reached across to pat Tom's shoulder; he shook his head and smiled. "I know where she bides, though, and one day I'll have her home. But Sam---"

"Sam's coming back," Rosie insisted stoutly. "He is."

"I hope so, Rosie." Tom patted her hand. "I do hope so."

 

*

 

In mid-July on a fine hot day, Rosie was alone in the garden, laying tomatoes out to dry in the sun and sternly telling herself not to be fearful; there was enough happening that day, what with her father and brothers haying and the Hamwiches home tending their own smial, and she really ought to be able to mind herself, grown lass as she was.

Feet came to the garden gate; they sounded like hobbits' feet, but Rosie crouched low behind the rosemary as she looked. Freddy Sandheaver stood there, his feathered cap in his hand. Remembering the last time she'd seen him, Rosie briefly thought of staying hidden, before she made herself get up. "Shirrif Sandheaver," she said formally, standing where she was.

"Rosie." He looked sweaty, and hurt, and sad, and young. "Rosie, I....may I come in?"

"As you wish." He let himself into the garden, held his hands out. "I, I'm sorry you're sorry to see me, Rosie. Can't say as I blame you. But I needed to, well, I can't go all the way to Overhill, it ain't allowed."

_Overhill?_ she thought. _That's the other side of Hobbiton from here._ "I thought Shirrifs could come and go as they pleased." Freddy winced at her words, but firmed his jaw. "They've dug up Bagshot Row," he said. "The Twofoots and Gaffer Gamgee and Missus Rumble, they've been evicted."


	5. Rosie's Year

  
  
  
**Current mood:** |   
cheerful  
---|---  
  
_ **Rosie's Year, 5/9. PG-13** _

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: Five of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Rosie/Sam, Jolly/Buttercup, Nick/Andy, Lotho/Buttercup, others discussed  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present. So will nonexplicit violence and occasional angst, as will original characters and fleshed out "just-a-name" characters.. Also, occasional Sackville-Bagginses.   
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.

 

Freddy Sandheaver related his tale over elevenses, and the Cottons listened with horror. "The Chief decided he wants a gravel pit, no one has an idea why. He sent the Men down to Bagshot Row yestereve, and they cleared out the hobbits living there, told them there were empty shacks on the edge of town towards Bywater. They took their pick of the goods, too, including all Daddy Twofoot's bottlings; Twofoot tried to protest and they smashed his still." Rosie's brothers all winced at that.

"Did the hobbits go down to the shacks?" Rosie's mother asked as she poured Freddy another mugful of barley-water. "Are they housed?"

"Thank'ee." Freddy nodded, but pursed his lips. "As well as might be, at any rate. Some of the Shirrifs, we helped 'em carry things, but not all could be taken in one go, and what was left for the second trip was smashed to bits by the time we'd got back."

Rosie pressed her hand to her mouth, thinking of Sam's room, his shelf of books, his mother's locket; she dearly hoped he'd taken them with him, and had never thought to ask. She thought of his bed, that had been his brother Halfred's before him, that he'd painted with flowers one day because it suited his boy's fancy, that he'd snuck her into a time or two soon after they started being kissing-friends. She looked over at Tom, and saw him thinking similar thoughts about Mari's things, before he raised his eyes to her and then looked at Freddy. "Do any of Gaffer Gamgee's family know?" Tom asked, and Freddy shook his head. "I came here as soon as I might. I daren't go as far as Overhill."

"Well, then." Tom was going to say more, but he glanced at Freddy's feathered cap and then at Freddy again, and shut his mouth, and Freddy smiled wryly. "I'm here as a friend, Tom," he said, "not a Shirrif."

Tom smiled and patted Freddy on the back, but Rosie wasn't quite so reassured. "Have they dug out other Rows?" she asked to change the subject; then it was much more thoroughly changed when the front door banged open and Buttercup ran in, sobbing hysterically. Jolly jumped up to catch her; Nick jumped up and ran out the door, and returned in a moment with Andy, who was also weeping, but could at least speak. "They took them!" Andy sobbed as Nick settled him in a chair.

Rosie got up to get handkerchiefs and mugs, but when her gaze skimmed over Buttercup she stopped and gasped; the lass had a huge purple-pink bruise all along one side of her face, too big to have been made by a hobbit's hand. "What befel?"

Freddy was already guessing, shaking his head, as Andy hiccupped out the story and Nick rubbed his back. "Our hole's gone! I went home bringing breakfast, and when I got there the whole of Clary Row was being dug up, and all the neighbors running this way and that, and Ma and Da and Buttercup trying to carry all they could. One of those ruffians grabbed at sommat, and Buttercup pulled back, and he knocked her down, and Ma and Da went to bawl him out, and he and some others dragged them off! That was the last we saw of them! And Da near too weak to walk!"

Andy subsided into tears, and Rosie's mother muttered under her breath as she patted his shoulder, then raised her voice to say soothingly, "There, Andy, lad, it will be all right. Nick and Nibs, take a wheelbarrow, go back with Andy and see what you can save. Jolly, let's see what we can put on Buttercup's bruise. Tom, go tell your Dad. Rosie lass, clear this kitchen for me. Freddy my lad, thank you for your news." Freddy rose and bowed and tipped his cap to Mrs. Cotton; he turned to look at Rosie, but she was already clearing the table and trying to decide if she wished to hear what else he might say, and by the time she had decided, Freddy was gone.

 

*

 

Despite their upset, Andy and Buttercup had salvaged some clothes and food from the ruin of Clary Row, and with Nick and Nibs' help they managed to gather up enough to fill the wheelbarrow, even if all the clothes needed to be washed and the bags and boxes were all covered with sand on the outside. "Those lazy Men will work like bees," Nick grumbled over tea, "if they might work to our ruin." Andy and Buttercup merely looked pale and pushed their food around on their plates.

Mrs. Cotton settled Andy and Buttercup into two of the back rooms; that night, Rosie listened for the sound of feet and whispers in the halls, and laughed to herself to hear them. The next morning she caught Buttercup coming out of Jolly's room; when Buttercup saw her her eyes went wide, and Rosie whispered in her ear, "I hope you at least mussed the sheets in your room," to make her giggle. Even if Rosie had minded, and she didn't, she couldn't have begrudged Buttercup a little happiness that already had her looking better.

Buttercup settled quietly and happily into the Cottons', but Andy glowered. Not at people----he smiled at each of them, smiles that always reached his eyes---and not at the stock, but at things, till he almost might have set something afire with his looks alone. Rosie watched Andy glower, and watched Nick worry after him, and thought of her last summer with Sam, which she'd spent worrying for him and he'd spent worrying for reasons he'd never fully told her. She hugged her brother and patted Andy's shoulder, and both lads smiled at her and kept right on with their worrying.

But, then, there was much to worry about. Tom took one more trip to Overhill of a night, and didn't return the next day; the family spent a harrowing day and a sleepless night picturing him in the Lockholes or dead, before he came home, explaining that he'd nearly been caught and had needed to hide. After that their father forbade him to go again, and he took it much as Rosie took her confinement, knowing there was no way it could be helped. At least he'd been able to bring the Cottons' promise to care for Gaffer Gamgee to Daisy and Mari; knowing that he'd lost his garden with his hole, Rosie's parents sent Tom and Jolly with a basket for him each week. It was simple fare, wholemeal bread from flour ground in the hand-mill, cheese and fruit and summer potatoes and herbs from the garden, but he always thanked the lads kindly when they brought it to him. Rosie thought of his cane, and how drafty his shack must be, and sent yarrow for his joints and a promise that she'd make him a quilt.

Meanwhile, it was high summer, and the fruit harvests came in their turn. Rosie's father looked up at the cherry trees in the orchard, dripping with ripening fruit, and said, "the Pimple's Men ain't come by to 'Gather' in a bit."

"Mayhap they're done with it, Dad," said Nibs hopefully, but their father shook his head. "More likely they'll come when they see us picking fruit, and take the half or more."

"They're never out at night," Jolly suggested, and Farmer Cotton clapped him on the back. "You weren't planning a long sleep, were you, my lads?" he asked his sons; Jolly laughed, and Nibs screwed up his face, which made Jolly and Farmer Cotton laugh all the harder.

Rosie soon found herself not overfond of picking at night. After climbing one tree by moonlight and looking down into darkness she decided to stay on the ground and steady the ladders instead, even though her brothers sometimes dropped cherries on her head. Their father had them pick half the cherries, leaving the other half for daytime picking; sure enough, when the patrolling Men saw them picking cherries by daytime they came around and 'gathered' well over half of the day's harvest, and of course not a cherry was to be had down at the Shirrif-houses where the 'Redistribution' took place, just the same coarse meal and moldy cheese.

Night picking worked well enough for the cherries that they also did it for the plums, but Nick fell off one of the ladders and twisted his ankle, and he was still in no shape to walk far when Andy's patience finally broke..

 

*

 

Jolly came home one day with dreadful rumors that the hobbits in the Lockholes were not being fed properly, and that night as she undressed Rosie heard an argument burst out in the kitchen. She ran from her room, wrapped in her robe, to find Andy assembling a pack while Nick and Buttercup pleaded with him, Rosie's mother tried to quiet them all, and Rosie's father leaned against the wall and watched with folded arms. Jolly and Tom and Nibs all appeared from their rooms just as Rosie's mother silenced the clamor with, "d'ye all want to draw the Shirrfs down on us?"

In the quiet, Rosie's father said to Andy, "lad, this is foolishness, and dangerous foolishness." Andy shook his head and kept tucking food into the pack. "I'm sorry, sir," he finally replied in a low voice, "but I must go. They're my folks."

"Andy, please!" Buttercup cried; Rosie's mother laid a hand on her arm, and she lowered her voice but clutched her brother's sleeve with a white-knuckled grip. "Andy, don't go. If aught befalls you---"

"You'll have Jolly, and all the rest of the Cottons." He set his jaw as if he were fighting back tears, and Buttercup promptly began weeping. "Buttercup, I _must_," he insisted, and kissed her brow, and pushed her away into Mrs. Cotton's arms.

"At least wait till my ankle's better and I can go with you," Nick pleaded. Andy looked at Nick, saw Farmer Cotton step away from the wall behind him, and flinched and shook his head. Nick's eyes went wide, but he understood when his father growled, "That, Bowman Cotton, would be never. Anders Hamwich ain't my son, I can't forbid him to go haring off into danger and disaster, but I can and I do forbid you."

Nick sighed and slumped in his chair. "Yes, Dad," he murmured; Andy put on his pack and nodded. "Farmer Cotton, sir, I'm ready."

Farmer Cotton sighed and shook his head. "I still say this is foolishness, lad." He left the kitchen, and Andy stepped up close to Nick, who hunched his shoulders. Andy laid a hand on Nick's hair, and Nick leaned into the touch, but still didn't look up.

"Mam, what is going on?" Tom asked just as Rosie was about to. Their mother turned, shook her head, and muttered, "Andy has it in his head to go to Michel Delving and see how his parents fare."

Rosie gasped; Buttercup burst out in a fresh peal of tears. "Andy---" said Tom, and Andy shook his head, as firm as they'd ever seen him. "You'd go, Tom," he said, running his fingers through Nick's hair. "If 'twere your folks, you'd go."

"And I should hope not," replied their mother, her crisp tones not disguising her worry. Andy shook his head again, and Nick wrapped his arm round his waist.

Farmer Cotton returned with a heavy jingling parcel bound into a handkerchief. "Here's your pay, lad," he said to Andy. "You won't hear reason?" Andy shook his head once more. "Then good luck, Andy Hamwich. Come back safe to us." Andy nodded, and shook Farmer Cotton's hand, and kissed Nick, who sat unmoving at the table; he embraced Mrs. Cotton and kissed Buttercup again, and shouldered his pack, and left. Rosie went to stand beside Nick as she watched Andy go; Nick never raised his head.

Mrs. Cotton sighed. "I hope we're wrong, Tolman," she said to her husband, who sighed in return and nodded.

 

*

 

They weren't wrong. Andy did not return, and Buttercup fretted as one week became two became three, as the summer stretched wearily on. Without both Andy and Fastolph the farm was short-handed, and at such a busy time of year, too; Farmer Cotton found some lads who needed a spot of work, which helped, but nevertheless the Cottons missed Fastolph and especially Andy greatly, and not just for their work. Without Andy, Nick seemed to fade, and would sometimes not speak for days.

One day they sat at supper, and Nick pushed his porridge around in the bowl. Rosie heard her mother scold him for not eating, but after knocking down walnuts all day her attention was mostly on her own bowl; then Nick suddenly shoved his chair back and ran to his room, and slammed the door behind him.

Rosie's mother sighed and began to rise. "That lad---"

"Mam, let me see to Nick." Rosie was surprised at herself when she said it; her mother was surprised to hear it, but sat back down and said only, "If you will, Rosie, and thank you." So Rosie left her half-finished bowl, with some regret, and went down to Nick's room.

Rosie knocked, got a muffled, "go away," went in anyway. Nick lay face down in his pillow, and didn't look up even when she laid a hand on his back. "You should eat, Nick," she whispered.

"'M not hungry," he replied. _To see him now, you'd never think he's coming of age round Yule_, Rosie thought, and sighed, and began rubbing his back. "I know you miss him," she said. "I miss my lad, too." _My lads_, she thought to herself, calling to memory slightly faded images of Sam and Mr. Frodo.

Nick merely snuffled into his pillow. Rosie kept stroking his back, as the moments stretched into minutes. Then Nick asked, still buried in his pillow, so low Rosie wasn't sure she heard him aright, "How do you do it?"

"Do what, Nick?"

"Rosie." Nick rolled over, sounding exasperated. His eyes were unsurprisingly red. "I look for him everywhere. I don't know where he is. I used to milk the cows with him, pitch the hay with him, hoe and weed laughing beside him. How do I do it now without him?"

"Nick." Looking at her brother's tearstained face, Rosie's heart hurt as he asked her the questions she'd asked herself. "You just do. Because he'd want you to keep living. Because he'll be back." She wasn't sure which of them she spoke to, but Nick took her hand, and thought on her words, and smiled. "D'ye think so, Rosie?" he asked like a little child, and she nodded, both to herself and to him. "He'll be back," she repeated, wiping Nick's face with the edge of her apron. "Come finish your supper?"

Nick shrugged and sat up. "I'm not hungry," he said, but when Rosie got up he did too, and returned out with her to the table. Her mother quietly fetched his bowlful back out of the pot, and Rosie's too; when she gave Rosie her porridge she also gave her a proud smile.

Buttercup looked at Rosie, and at Nick, and at Jolly, and as she resumed eating thoughts rippled across her brow.

 

*

 

_It's my and Jolly's turn to do the yelling_, said the voice in the back of Rosie's head, the one bit of her mind not hazed with frustration and fear. At least Buttercup wasn't packing to be gone awhile; she was merely tying her hair up with red and green ribbons to match her best summer dress, the set of her jaw so like her brother's. "He's the Chief," she repeated, voice flat with conviction. "He can order Andy and my Mam and Da let go."

"And why will he, just because a pretty lass asks him to?" Jolly looked distinctly un-Jolly, his hands clenched at his sides. "You don't know but that others have asked."

"I don't know but that it worked," Buttercup replied. "I have to try."

"Buttercup, you know what he did to Mari," Rosie pleaded. "What makes you think he ain't going to ask you to bed with him, or worse?"

Buttercup faltered at that; Jolly winced, and her gaze slid to him. "Don't ask me that, Rosie," she murmured..

"Tell me you won't if he asks," said Jolly; Buttercup closed her eyes. "Don't ask me that, Jolly," she whispered. He gritted his teeth, swore under his breath, stormed out of the room. Rosie resisted the urge to clutch Buttercup's shoulders and shake her. "You fool girl," she hissed. "Do you know what you do?"

Buttercup's eyes ran over with tears, but she held her chin up. "I can't sit around no more, Rosie, with my family all locked up. I love Jolly, you know I do, but Andy's my brother." With that she left the room, and Rosie let herself curse before she followed.

Jolly was down in the yard, giving Nick and Nibs the rough side of his tongue. "If Dad and Mam were here they'd tan your hides, big as you are!" he was saying when Rosie reached the door. His brothers sat in the small cart with the ponies in harness, heads bowed, not even trying to argue. Buttercup came down the steps, and Jolly's fingers flexed, the muscles in his arms rippled, with the effort of not grabbing her. "Buttercup, _please_," he said once more, and she looked up at him and shook her head. "I have to try, Jolly. Kiss me for luck?"

Rosie opened her mouth at that, but _how dare you ask?_ and _all good luck!_ and _kiss her, Jolly, lest we never see her more_ all jammed together in her mouth. In the silence Jolly looked at Buttercup, and she slid an arm around his neck and kissed him; then she climbed into the cart, and Nick and Nibs drove her away to Hobbiton.

Rosie ran down to put her arm through Jolly's, as he turned to watch them out of sight. "I don't believe my eyes, Rosie," he said, in a hoarse small voice. "I can't believe she's done this."

"Oh, Jolly." Rosie leaned her head against her brother's arm. "Oh, Jolly. I wish...." Words were useless. When they were out of sight and beyond, Rosie drew Jolly back up the steps into the house.

 

*

 

As she had expected, when they returned and heard, Rosie's parents took one look at the stricken Jolly and berated Rosie for letting Nick and Nibs drive Buttercup off on her fool's errand. Exhausted from doing her brothers' chores and her own weeping, Rosie stood with head bowed and bore the tongue-lashing like a hot rain on her head; suddenly, it ended earlier than she was expecting, and when she raised her head her parents were looking at her with tears in their eyes. "Oh, Rosie, our brave lass," said her mother, pulling her into a fierce hug. "These are dark days. I would never have wanted you to see them. I would never have wanted any of you to see them."

Clutching her mother, Rosie raised her eyes to her father, who looked at her with wet eyes, looking so very old, and she realized that if he tried to speak he'd weep; she freed a hand to hold out to him, and he took it and squeezed it for a moment before turning away, scrubbing his sleeve across his eyes.

Nick and Nibs returned some hours later, without Buttercup, but at least with news. "Mr. Pi---Mr. Lotho gave Buttercup a position at Bag End," said Nibs. Nick glanced at Jolly and kept quiet. "He told her he needs a housekeeper, and he'll buy her dresses, and if she works for two months he''ll let her family go." Nibs smiled as if this were good news.

"And she believed all that moonshine?" Nibs' smile faded as his mother put her hands on her hips. "Did you, Carl Cotton? D'ye believe a word of it?" Nibs was gaping now, not least at being addressed by his given name; Nick was trying his best to vanish. "But Mam, he said---"

"And what is that particular gentlehobbit's word worth, my ninnyhammer of a youngest?" Rosie listened and tried not to prick herself as she quilted, torn between laughter and weeping.

Jolly growled. "Nick, you ain't even traded my sweetheart for yours. Now we've lost 'em both. A pretty bargain," He stalked off, and the slam pf his door echoed up the hallway. Mrs. Cotton looked at her younger sons and sighed. "I do not know what to say to you," she said, and turned her back to them, and Rosie could almost have felt sorry for the lads. Almost.

.   
*

 

A weary August gave way to a cheerless September. Rosie looked up into the bright blue sky and wondered where the light was that had poured into her heart in March, and where Sam was, and if Mr. Frodo were with him. Jolly was even more sullen and quiet than Nick, not a joke in his mouth nor a smile on it, and when Rosie tried to speak to him he insisted that he was fine. There were more frequent 'gatherings', more hobbits thrown out of their holes, more bad news and no good. Mr. Frodo's birthday came by, and Rosie held her book in her hands and looked up; a bright star shone overhead, as if none of the Troubles could touch it, and for a moment she thought it was his gift to her, before she pushed the the idle fancy from her mind and put her book away.

Soon after Mr. Frodo's birthday, Tom came home with two disturbing bits of news. One was that a Man called Sharkey, tall with piercing eyes, had moved into Bag End, and that it seemed that the Men heeded him now, not Lotho Pimple. The other was that the Men had grown more violent still under Sharkey's direction, burning crops and trees and attacking hobbits in their holes, doing mischief day and night. Farmer Cotton listened to this with lips pressed tightly together, and the next morning he brought a couple of pitchforks in and laid them by the front door.

Those pitchforks turned out to be useful much sooner than they'd expected. A couple of days later, Rosie was in the garden; she'd been working with Nick, but he went in for a drink while she kept on, enjoying the fall breeze as she dug beets, humming gently to herself. For all of her life she never knew what made her look up just in time to see the Man climbing over the garden gate, while another stood in the Road, hand pressed to his mouth, shoulders shaking with stifled laughter.

For a moment, Rosie froze. Then she did three things at once: she threw the beet in her hand at the ruffian, screamed at the top of her lungs, and took to her heels. She heard a cry of pain and a curse behind her, and a laugh in a different voice, but she didn't turn to look. The back store-room window was large enough to fit through, if she could just reach it.

Her legs felt as if they dragged through honey or mud. The Man panted behind her like a great beast. The window came towards her, achingly slowly. She leaped for it, heard her dress tear, kicked and fell in and landed with a thud; pain shot up her side but she didn't heed it as she ran, as time sped up again, as the Man swore through the window, unable to follow.

Tom appeared in the hall. "Rosie, what?"

"A Man," she panted, skidding towards the closet that held the winter coats. "In the garden. By the store-room window." She dove in and Tom shut the doors for her; she heard him run as she pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to quiet her heaving breaths, to slow her pounding heart.

A cloak had fallen when Rosie leapt into the closet. She tugged it over herself, surrounding herself with the scents of dust and thyme and meadowsweet, listening to her heart pound. There was shouting beyond the closet; she curled up, and shook, and swallowed bile, and waited in the warm stifling dark.

After an age, or so it seemed, her father opened the door and helped a blinking Rosie back out into the sunlight, dim in the hall but dazzling to her eyes. "They're gone," he said, voice grim nevertheless. "No one's hurt."

"Good." Rosie heaved a deep breath. She was still shaking. Her father chafed her shoulder as if she were cold, but didn't look at her. "What's left to do in the garden?" he asked, voice dull.

"Dad?" Rosie blinked at the question. Her heart was still racing.

"It's....it'd be best if the lads take over the garden." Rosie opened her mouth, and her father looked at her sternly. "It would be best, Rosie."

"And when will I ever see the Sun?" Rosie wrenched away from her father, rage speeding her heart again. "Is this house just a bigger Lockhole?"

"Don't you sass me, Rose." Her father glared at her, voice gone cold, but Rosie was too hot to feel it. "It ain't sass, Dad, it's sense! You can't lock me up like a precious mathom you're afraid someone'll steal!"

"I'm trying to keep you safe, lass!" he roared, and Rosie blinked, and found her eyes full of tears. Then her father blinked, and she saw his face was wet. Was he weeping? He scrubbed his sleeve across his face, gruffly whispered, "c'mere," and she went to him and he held her. "Rosie, it ain't fair, and I'm sorry. I don't want to lock my flower away from the Sun. But lass, if you hadn't've been so quick....a lass was killed, some days ago. I couldn't bear it, Rosie, I couldn't bear it."

Rosie felt her father, her strong father, shaking, and she began to cry like a child. "Da. I know, I know," she said before her sobs made it impossible to speak. She stood in her father's embrace, weeping against his chest, and thought, _How much more of this can we stand?_

 

*

 

So it was over a month before Rosie left the house again; sometimes she felt she could beat her fists against the walls till they fell and she could get outside. She sat beneath the windows, and looked up at the high stars, and struggled to not despair.

In mid-October Rosie was cooking when she heard a hoarse voice outside screaming her name, and realized it was Jolly's. She ran to the front door and threw it open, and he came in carrying a bruised, bedraggled Buttercup; wearing the same dress she'd left in but missing her bodice, she shivered swooning against his chest. "I found her on the steps," he told Rosie as they bore Buttercup to the room that still held her things. "She told me she left Bag End this morning. She told me Pimple threw her out."

"This morning?" Rosie asked as she opened the door for Jolly. "It's nearly teatime! I wonder what kept her?" Realizing the grimness of any possible answers to that question, Rosie winced, then forcefully put the thought from her mind as she ran to the kitchen for a basin and rags.

When they peeled the dress from Buttercup they both gasped. The lass was all over bruises, great ugly yellow-and-purple blotches, and the dress was so stained and battered it was hard to believe it'd once been a vibrant green. Jolly ran for their mother, while Rosie laid wet cloths on the worst hurts, and Buttercup mumbled but didn't wake. When their mother arrived, Rosie explained till Buttercup roused enough to moan, "Jolly, Jolly", so Rosie letf her Mam to take over and went looking for him; she found him by the woodpile, moodily reducing firewood to kindling. "So, she's back," Rosie observed.

"Aye." Jolly split another log. "Wonder why?"

Rosie snorted and folded her arms. "Jolly Cotton, alone of all of us you have your sweetheart back." He didn't say anything. "And from the looks of her she'll need you more'n ever."

He grunted, split another log. Rosie turned to go back into the house, when Jolly murmured, very low, "She's been to bed with him, Rosie. I don't know. I don't know."

Well, that was better than it might have been. "You saw those bruises, Jolly. It can't've been pleasant." Rosie laid a hand on his shoulder. "If 'twere you or Tom, Nick or Nibs, Mam or Da...it's a choice I'd hope never to have to make." He looked at her, and then at his hands, and then laid the axe down and went with her back into the house.

 

*

 

The Cottons sat together in their kitchen after supper, saving light and keeping company. Rosie and her mother had pulled the rocking-chairs to the chimney corner, and Rosie worked on the quilt she'd promised Gaffer Gamgee while her mother sewed a new dress for Buttercup. Rosie's brothers sat at the table, sharpening axes or whittling wood. Her father sat and watched his family, chewing on the end of his pipe though there was no leaf to tuck into it; even so, they were safe together for the moment, and he looked almost content.

A clear horn-call rang through the air, filled the evening sky, startled them all. Rosie stuck her needle into her finger, but hardly noticed for the ringing in her ears, in her heart; it echoed all through her, calling her almost as if with words, and she found herself on her feet.

So were her father, her mother, her brothers. "What in all the Shire?" cried Nick. "That don't sound like a ruffian's horn."

"It may yet be, lad," said their father, glancing over at Rosie and his wife. Buttercup appeared in the kitchen doorway, wrapped in a blanket, shaking and pale, the fading bruises still yellow on her arms; Farmer Cotton looked at her, too, and clenched his jaw. "C'mon, my lads. If trouble's coming down South Lane, we'll go to meet it. Nibs, stay here." Jolly turned to look at Buttercup as he went; she gave him the best smile she could, but it was pale and wan as the rest of her. Tom handed him an axe, and took one himself, and they were gone out the door as the last faint echoes of the horn-call died away.

"What could it be?" Rosie asked, her heart pounding within her. It didn't feel like fear. "What could it be?" Buttercup echoed, shaking with dread; Rosie's mother went to her and patted her arm gently. "I'm sure it's fine, lass. Go back to bed, you need rest."

While her mother was busy with Buttercup, Rosie slipped down the hall to the door. She could hear noises down the road, shouts and dogs barking. "Where're you bound?" cried Nibs, running up behind her. "It ain't safe and you know it."

"Come guard me then," Rosie told him, grinning recklessly, a strange excitement tingling along her arms and legs. She needed to know what was going on. Nibs stared at her, and she stared back; then he grabbed up a hay-fork from beside the door and went out on the steps with her. They heard hooves, and a pony trotted out of the gloom, bearing a hobbit-sized rider. Nibs stepped in front of Rosie, pitchfork held high.

"Rosie! Nibs!" Their mother came out onto the steps behind them, stopping when she saw what Rosie and Nibs were staring at; the hobbit rode up to the steps, looking up, and the warm light from the house spilled over him, glowing in his fair hair. He drew rein at the bottom of the steps and sat there on his pony; he wore strange-looking gear and a tunic of metal rings, a sword at his waist and a broad smile on his snub-nosed face, and warm brown eyes Rosie would have known anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

_Sam._


	6. Rosie's Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fair bit of the dialogue in this chapter is directly taken from _The Return of the King_. No infringement is intended.

  
  
  
**Current mood:** |   
cheerful  
---|---  
  
_ **Rosie's Year, 6/9. PG-13** _

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: Six of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Rosie/Sam, Frodo/Sam, Frodo/Rosie, Jolly/Buttercup, others discussed  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present. So will nonexplicit violence and occasional angst, as will original characters and fleshed out "just-a-name" characters.. Also, occasional Sackville-Bagginses.   
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.  
Author's Note: A fair bit of the dialogue in this chapter is directly taken from _The Return of the King_. No infringement is intended.

"It's me!" Sam called out. "Sam Gamgee! So don't try prodding me, Nibs. Anyway, I've a mail-shirt on me." He dismounted, looking up at them; Nibs lowered the hay-fork, but otherwise they stood as if rooted to the spot. Rosie's heart pounded in her throat, all the worry and fear and hope of the past year choking her. Sam was back, after a year, after _this_ year, after all this time! Sam was back, looking so very changed. The mail-shirt jingled faintly as he climbed the steps.

"Good evening, Mrs. Cotton!" he called, still smiling, hands out. "Hullo, Rosie!"

Rosie's tongue finally unstuck. "Hullo, Sam! Where've you been? They said you were dead, but I've been expecting you since the Spring. You haven't hurried, have you?" Rosie meant it for a tease, but Sam blinked and blushed, his smile fading a bit, and she wished she could kick herself. "Perhaps not," he said, "but I'm hurrying now. We're setting about the ruffians, and I've got to get back to Mr. Frodo. But I thought I'd have a look and see how Mrs. Cotton was keeping, and you, Rosie."

_Mr. Frodo!_ The blood roared in Rosie's ears. Mr. Frodo was back, too, he was alive! She barely heard her mother reply, "We're keeping nicely, thank you, Or should be, if it weren't for these thieving ruffians."

That reminder jolted Rosie back to the present. The ruffians were about indeed, and Mr. Frodo was out there, not knowing what the Shire had come to this past year. "Well, be off with you!" she said. "If you've been looking after Mr. Frodo all this while, what d'ye want to leave him for, as soon as things look dangerous?"

_That didn't come out right, at all._ Rosie heard herself, and winced, and her heart sank into her belly. Sam looked at her with great brown eyes, and turned, and went back down the steps to his pony; she thought she might scream, if she could have trusted her wayward tongue. Sam mounted the pony. He was going away, again, far too soon, and into danger. Rosie clenched her fingers in her skirt, took a breath, said the only word in her head. "Sam!"

At least he looked up at that, and then smiled. Rosie ran down the steps. "I think you look fine, Sam." She was at the bottom of the steps now, looking up at him, as at a warrior in a tale, but still Sam, her Sam. Mr. Frodo's Sam. The pony whickered, as if to say, 'We must go.'

Rosie took another breath, made herself smile, found smiling vastly easier when Sam smiled back. "Go on now! But take care of yourself, and come straight back as soon as you have settled the ruffians!" She blew him a kiss, and he caught it, and grinned, Sam grinned! And then he was off, riding back down the lane, back into the gloom, back into danger.

She hadn't even touched him.

Rosie stood and watched until after Sam had vanished. Her mother came down the steps to put an arm round her shoulders. "Life found a way, Rosie. Your Sam's back.".

"Yes, Mam." Rosie kept staring into the night, as if Sam might return, until her mother gently tugged at her shoulders. "Come on, lass. It ain't safe out here as yet."

"But Sam is back. He'll help Da and the lads." Rosie couldn't make herself budge.

"Yes, he will, and they'll need feeding." Rosie turned her head, and found her mother smiling reassuringly; she nodded and let herself be led back up the steps.

 

*

 

For the rest of her life, Rosie could never recall how she spent the time from when Sam left to when her father and brothers came back with Mr. Frodo and Mr. Merry. She must have helped her Mam cook, because when they arrived there was hot food for them, onions with apples and noodles and a pan-cooked chicken; she must have helped Buttercup dress, because Buttercup was in the kitchen with them to greet the returning Travelers before she fled back to her room. Rosie remembered well what _they'd_ done, because they told her and Nibs and their mother all about it, how their father had stood alone in the midst of the street to draw the eyes of the Men until the other hobbits could surround and defeat them. When their mother heard this she clutched his arm and cried, "Tolman Cotton, what possessed you?" but her eyes shone, and he grinned at her almost bashfully.

Rosie's eyes, meanwhile, were restless. Where was Sam? And where was Jolly? Everyone looked cheerful, so they must be all right, she told herself as she bustled about, refilling teacups and plates, listening to Nick describe how Mr. Merry had commanded the ruffians to clear out while Mr. Merry grinned like a cat in cream. Nick was more animated than he'd been since Andy had gone; Rosie watched him sketch the scene with his hands, and smiled, about to turn and carry another dish to the sink.

Mr. Frodo looked up at her then, and caught her eyes.

His blue gaze sent a shock through her, as if a ray of moonlight transfixed her. Rosie trembled and nearly dropped the dish in her hands; she hadn't dared look at him, lest her heart be seen in her eyes, but now he held her gaze as he got up from the table, his fine grey cloak swirling about him. He came to her, took the dish out of her hands, took her hands in his cool ones, and something felt odd about his hand, but she couldn't look away from those eyes to see. "Hullo, Miss Rosie," he said softly, pale as the moonlight but solid and real, eyes so blue beneath the curls on his brow, and then he smiled.

Rosie couldn't do anything but stare up at Mr. Frodo, and his smile grew into a grin. "I've brought your Sam back to you ."

"Sam," Rosie echoed witlessly, and the grin settled back into a kind smile. "He's gone with Jolly to see to his Gaffer, but he'll be here soon. We're to stay the night."

"Frodo!" called Mr. Merry from the table, and when Frodo turned his head Rosie was released from the spell of those eyes; green glinted at his throat, and she saw that the brooch holding his cloak was in the form of a fine green leaf. "You'll want to hear this," Mr. Merry said, and Mr. Frodo nodded and squeezed Rosie's hands before releasing them. "We'll talk later," he promised her, and then he returned to the table, listening to her father describing the past year's Troubles, while Rosie's hands hung at her sides, tingling with the feeling of Mr. Frodo's hands round them.

"Rosie?" Her mother's voice low and concerned in her ear. "Be you well?" Rosie swallowed against the lump in her throat, and nodded, looking at Mr. Frodo, alive and well and in their kitchen, and yet somehow so changed. And Sam... "Mr. Frodo said he's brought Sam back to me," Rosie whispered, and her mother squeezed her shoulders. "I hope that Samwise has the wit to see it," she said tartly, and Rosie couldn't help but laugh.

As if called by their words, in came Sam, with Jolly and his Gaffer. Jolly came over to ask their mother about Buttercup; the Gaffer began scolding Mr. Frodo, who bore it patiently while Mr. Merry smiled. Sam stood beside him, cheeks pink as apples, and looked from beneath his lashes at Rosie, who returned the covert stare, trembling with wanting to run to him, afraid if she touched him he might vanish again.

So, Rosie looked at Sam, at his familiar fair hair and brown eyes and broad hands, at how unfamiliarly thin he was and how he wore the sword at his hip the way her father carried a pitchfork. She listened to Mr. Frodo describe how folk were making songs of Sam's doings "from here to the Sea and beyond the Great River," and watched Sam blush the way he'd used to when Mr. Frodo had praised his gardening or Rosie had kissed him for a song, and she knew it must be true. When Sam caught her looking and turned redder yet Rosie smiled all the more, till she thought she might never stop smiling again.

Her Sam was back. She had a year's worth of smiles to catch up on.

Soon enough, however, they all needed to go to bed; her father and Mr. Merry were gravely discussing the trouble they expected on the morrow, and her brothers were trying to hide their yawns. Rosie's mother shooed them off to bed, sending Nibs to bunk with Nick, and dispatched Rosie to help her bring out sheets and basins and water for each guest. She showed Mr. Frodo to the best guest-room, then Mr. Merry, then the Gaffer, and put Sam in Nibs' room; Rosie caught Sam's worried glance as Mr. Frodo disappeared into his room, and briefly wondered if her mother had assigned the rooms deliberately. She rather hoped not.

Mrs. Cotton kissed Rosie goodnight and sought her bed. Rosie went into her room, undressed and washed up for the night, and sat down below her window to stare up into the dark sky. The night's events seemed almost a dream, but for the pounding in her chest, the way her skin tingled just to know that Sam and Mr. Frodo were back, were in the same house, were alive.

Rosie took a deep breath, and counted as far as she could stand to. She'd intended an hundred, but by twenty-three the hallways were quiet. She wrapped her robe round herself, lifted her candle, and crept out.

Sam, still in shirt and breeches, was already halfway down the hallway; she had to press her hand to her mouth to muffle her laughter, and his eyes and grin shone in the candlelight. She turned and scratched at Mr. Frodo's door; Sam came up beside her, warm and solid, and took her hand. The feel of it ran tingles up her arm into her heart as they stood there waiting before the door.

Mr. Frodo opened it, and smiled.

Rosie set her candle down by the washstand; Sam had released her hand to take Mr. Frodo's. She clasped her hands before her and looked at them. Mr. Frodo swam in a nightshirt far too big for him; Sam looked at him as if he rather than the candles lit the room. How they'd been before they left was a lamp to the bonfire of what it was now, and yet there was a gentleness to the heat, like banked coals. Rosie stood by the washstand, and looked at them as they looked at each other, and felt her chest tighten as she wondered if there were any room for her in that warmth. A year was a long time.

Then they turned as one to look at her, blue eyes and brown both shining. "Sam," said Mr. Frodo, warm and low and laughing, as he gave Sam a little push, and Sam stumbled forward to blush red and take Rosie's hands in his as shyly as when they were teens and as gently as if he cupped a butterfly. Rosie looked up at Sam, the entire room seeming to pulse around them in time with her pounding heart, and turned her hands outwards to clasp his, and smiled, and Sam smiled back.

Then he pulled her in and kissed her with everything in him, the longing of the whole year apart, clutching her so tightly she couldn't breathe and kissing her so sweetly she didn't care. _Sam_, Rosie thought, and would have cried out if she could have. _Sam, Sam, Sam_. One of them sobbed; Rosie realized it was Sam, and pried her mouth free to clutch his face between her hands and kiss the tears from his cheeks, and now she was murmuring his name. "Sam. Oh, Sam."

"Rosie." Her name in his mouth like a song, Sam kissed her cheeks, her chin, her mouth, her brow. "Rosie, Rosie." He kissed her once more, hard and shading up to hot, then pushed her gentle-roughly to arm's length and scrubbed a sleeve across his eyes. "Rosie, lass. You look, you look---"

"You look wonderful," said Mr. Frodo warmly, and Rosie turned and held out a hand to him, at the same time as Sam did. "You look like home, Rosie."

"Welcome home, Mr. Frodo." Rosie felt her own cheeks going red as her namesake, as he smiled and leaned in to kiss her, as gentle as Sam's kiss was passionate, but still for a good long moment. When he drew back he smiled and tugged her and Sam closer, and they went; both their arms round her waist, Rosie leaned her head against Sam's chest and looked at their joined hands before her.

That was when she saw Mr. Frodo's missing finger.

In the next moment she realized that it couldn't have a pleasant tale, but Mr. Frodo had seen her glance and felt her tense, and he sighed into her hair. "It's a story for another time," he said softly, "and tomorrow will be a long day. We'd all best get some sleep."

Rosie nodded. "True, Mr. Frodo," said Sam, and kissed Rosie's brow and unwound his arm from her waist. Frodo hung on a moment longer despite his words. "We _will_ talk," he murmured in her ear. "But for now, goodnight."

"Goodnight, then, Mr. Frodo. Goodnight, Sam." They kissed her, Sam plainly wishing she might stay, Frodo gentle as his voice, and she shut the door behind her, realized she'd left her candle, and laughed at herself as she carefully crept back to her room, her heart dancing within her. She had no idea how she'd manage to sleep. They were back!

 

*

 

Somehow, Rosie slept, deeply and dreamlessly and so soundly that her mother had to shake her awake in the first grey of dawn. The Gaffer rose with them despite Sam's protestations, to clap his son on the shoulder and say, "I'm right proud o'ye," so that Sam's lip quivered and Rosie had to hide her tears by bending over the breakfast dishes.

Far too soon, they were ready to leave. Rosie's mother straightened each son's collar, made sure his braces were clipped and his quiver was secure, and then kissed and embraced him; to her husband she gave two kisses. Rosie kissed her brothers, too, and punched them gently to make them smile. Jolly grinned and punched her back. Nibs was already smiling, bouncing on his feet, excited as a child before a Fair. "Just think, we'll be great heroes, like in a tale!" he crowed.

Mr. Merry and Mr. Frodo exchanged wry looks. "We've a job to do, lad, and it'll be done all the better if you steady yourself," admonished Farmer Cotton. Nibs stopped bouncing at that, at least.

Rosie gave Mr. Merry her hands, and he kissed them, and smiled at her. Had he always been so very tall? She didn't recall that height from before. Mr. Frodo kissed her hands as well, and gave her an entirely different sort of smile, but his eyes were full of shadows that made Rosie's heart ache. She wanted to put her arms round him and kiss him properly, till his eyes cleared, till he felt some of the hope he'd brought her and all the Shire.

Instead, she threw her arms round Sam, whom she could hold, and kissed him till her brothers whistled; she whispered in his ear, as she had ever done, "give him this one," before kissing him again. Then she whispered in the other ear, "come back to me, Sam"; he looked at her with clear eyes, and nodded, and despite the danger of the day, Rosie felt a shining hope.

Buttercup squeezed the lads' hands; when she came to Jolly she set her shoulders as if she were going to the battle and closed her eyes and tried to force herself to kiss him, till she fairly trembled; he shook his head and touched her cheek, and she opened her eyes wide and looked up, then managed the brightest smile they'd seen from her yet since her return. "Good luck today," she whispered, and Jolly smiled. "With all today's hunting, I hope I catch something for the pot," he joked, and his brothers laughed and Buttercup actually grinned.

Then they rode off, and Buttercup and Rosie and Mrs. Cotton went down to the steps to see them off into the bright November dawn, watching them out of sight.

After a year and more, Rosie thought, the waiting should have been easy. Instead it was harder than ever. Buttercup went back to bed; the Gaffer sat in a rocking-chair in the kitchen and went back to sleep; Rosie, however, paced through the house, through every room. She stripped the beds and pumped water and washed the sheets though they didn't need it, and dragged the basket out to the garden to feel the sunshine and the breeze. It was thin November sunshine, but when Rosie turned her face upwards it felt like spring.

Her mother found her hanging the sheets out. "Should you be out here, lass?" she inquired. Rosie shrugged and kept hanging. "If it ain't safe, Mam, then neither's inside the house," she pointed out. "'Sides, they rounded up the Bywater ruffians last night, and all the others are busy getting as they deserve."

Rosie's mother laid a hand on her shoulder; Rosie felt it shaking, and closed her hand round it. "Well, 'tis wise to keep busy," Rosie's Mam said with a smile, before letting go to help Rosie hang out the sheets.

 

*

 

It was a bit past noon, and Rosie was just re-making the beds, when she heard a clamor at the front of the smial. For the first time that day, her hope failed her, and she felt sick with a sudden wave of fear; the nearby closet looked inviting and dark, but she clenched her fists and made herself walk forwards. If the news were bad, if it were trouble, her Mam would need her, as would the Gaffer.

When she reached the kitchen, Rosie heard a voice that swept her heart up into relief and gladness and her feet up into a run. Sam's voice, weary but strong, saying, "easy now, lad, easy." She found him at the front door, and was glad she'd made the beds. Sam looked fine, moving without pain, dusty but unbloodied; the lad Sam was easing along was Jolly, his other arm round their mother's shoulders, his right leg wrapped in bandages torn from someone's clothes. Despite his injury, he grinned as he hobbled. "We've done it!" he cried to Rosie when he saw her, "They're dead or gone!"

"Good, lad," Rosie's mother replied absently, her eyes on his injured leg. Rosie let them into his bedroom, turned, and gasped to see Tom and Nick; between them, in a sling made of a cloak, they carried an unconscious and bloody Robin Sandheaver, his head and arm bound with rough bandages. "He saw us and asked to come here," Tom explained as they lifted him gently into a guest bed. "How could we say him no?"

"How did he come to the fight?" Rosie asked as she sat beside him. She longed to go find Sam and Mr. Frodo, but Robin looked like he needed her more. "Nick, fetch me a basin, please?"

"Chief Pimple sent the Hobbiton troop of Shirrifs up to Bywater," said Tom as he helped her undo Robin's ruined clothes, "and they took one look and joined us to a hobbit, casting those damned feathers from their caps. They charged the ruffians as were breaking out, right behind Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin."

_Mr. Pippin?_ thought Rosie, remembering Mr. Frodo's sweet scatterbrained tween kinsman. Him, leading a charge in a battle? And the Shirrifs of Hobbiton at the fight? Where was Freddy Sandheaver? The day obviously had quite a story to it; however, Rosie thought as she sponged blood from Robin's pale face, that tale would have to wait.

Poor Robin was in a bad way, blood-clots sticking the bandages to his wounds. Rosie let them be and covered him warmly; she kissed the one bare bit of his brow to settle him, and he looked a little better for it. Down the hall in the kitchen, Rosie heard a late and subdued luncheon being served up. She left Robin long enough to come out and see that all her brothers were back, and her Dad too; aside of Nibs, who had a great strip of cloth wound round his face, they were even unhurt. So were Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, though they leaned on each other even at the table and gave her weary smiles.

Mr. Frodo, well, he didn't have any hurt that Rosie could see, but he looked so sad and distant she didn't think she could deem him unscathed. He held something around his neck with his left hand, the hurt hand, even as he ate with his right, and he only looked up when Sam said something to him. Sam looked up at Rosie and smiled reassuringly, and she blew him a kiss and went away again. Jolly needed to be fed, and Robin ought not to be left alone.

So, Rosie filled a plate, and went to Jolly's room, where she found Buttercup quite unsurprisingly sitting with him and looking better than might have been expected. Jolly was telling her of the battle, and when he saw Rosie he reached for her hand. "D'ye want to hear how I took a Man's arm clean off, Rosie?"

"Ugh, Jolly Cotton, I don't." Rosie grinned at Jolly and kissed him on his brow; she patted Buttercup on the shoulder, and left her to listen with shining eyes to Jolly's bloody tale. Then she returned to Robin, who was fortunately still breathing, and perhaps had a bit more color in his face. Rosie sat on the side of his bed and chafed his uninjured hand and wondered if his parents knew where he was, until Sam came by carrying a plate of food. "You ain't had lunch yet," he said.

"Sam." Rosie took the plate and set it down, took Sam's hands in hers. "Will you, can Mr. Frodo spare you?"

He shook his head, his smile sweet and sad. "No, Rosie, I can't stay. We're off to Hobbiton, to deal with Pimple. Your Dad and brothers set out to find some lads to come with us."

Rosie nodded, thinking of Marigold, and Buttercup, and her father shamed at his very door. "Tan his bloody hide, Sam," she said fiercely, clutching his hands; Sam merely gave her that same sweet sad smile. "No, lass. Mr. Frodo ain't for punishing him; he aims to save him."

"Save Pimple?" Rosie cried, shocked. "Save him to more mischief and ruin yet?" Robin stirred and mumbled, and Sam squeezed her hands, gently but firmly, till she looked up at his face again. "I've a punch or three for that pimply face myself," said Sam with a lopsided grin, "and Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin ain't in gentle moods. But Mr. Frodo, well, I've followed him so far, I'll follow him in this."

Rosie looked up into Sam's clear brown eyes, and nodded, and sighed, letting her rage drain away; stepping forward, she pressed her face to his shoulder. "Sam," she murmured, feeling his pulse against her cheek, even though all the layers of clothes. "Sam. I knew you'd come back."

"I have, Rose. I have." Sam's hands went round her waist and up into her hair, and he pressed her to him with barely-checked strength. "And I mean to stay." He tilted her face up and kissed her firmly, then unwound his arms from her and left, glancing back with a smile. Rosie stood by the bed, her mouth full of Sam's kiss, her eyes full of his gaze, her heart full of him.

"Rosie?" Robin whispered, and she turned to find him awake. "Robin," she said, taking his hand; he looked up at her and drew a breath and began to shake. "Robin, shhh. Lie easy."

"My brother's dead," Robin whimpered, and Rosie gasped. "Freddy's dead, because of me." Rosie's knees gave way, and she sat heavily on the bed beside him. "I'd not stay behind when we Shirrifs went, and he stuck the great brute going for me, and now he's dead, he's dead." He burst into tears.

"Oh, Robin." Rosie stroked his brow as he wept, a great chill numbness within her. "Robin, you mustn't take on so. You need to lie still. Let me fetch you some water." Her words sounded thin and flimsy in her own ears, but Robin gulped and nodded and quieted beneath her hand, and drank a little water before sinking back against the pillows.

"Robin, shh, it's all right, shh." Freddy was dead. The chill within her started to crack at the edges; her eyes began to prickle. But Robin closed his eyes, and sighed, and was soon asleep again.

Rosie sat with Robin for awhile longer, holding his hand, remembering dancing the Springle-ring with him at Yule, remembering Freddy's shy sad face looking at her across the garden gate. Now Freddy was dead, she'd never see him more, and Robin was sorely wounded, and how many more hobbits were like them? As she looked at Robin's pale bruised face, the icy lump within her crumbled to tears and she began to sob; she pressed the hem of her apron to her eyes and wept, for Freddy, for Robin, for all the Shire.

Eventually, Rosie was cried out; she drew a great steadying breath, and wiped her face, and left Robin to sleep as she picked up her plate and stepped out to see what needed to be done.

 

*

 

The afternoon passed peacefully enough, not least for the aftermath of a battle. Goody Adelfoot the healer drove up in her trap, sent by Mr. Frodo to see to the wounded lads; she was breathless with haste, as all the healers in Bywater had been sent out to tend over two dozen wounded hobbits, but not so hasty that her hands were ungentle. Rosie's mother assisted Goody and sent Rosie away, so Rosie went to see to the Gaffer, who seemed quite content to sit by the chimney corner in the kitchen and rest in the warmth. Buttercup looked nearly like her old self, pink-cheeked and smiling and strong enough to do all the luncheon dishes, though she did go pale and clutch the washtub's edge when they heard Jolly cry out; she and Rosie stared at each other till they heard him laugh and they could breathe again.

After Goody had been fed afternoon tea and thanked and paid, Rosie looked in on the lads. Jolly had subsided into sleep, a proud smile on his pale face; for all of Nibs' pouting at being left home for wounded, he was sound asleep as well. And Robin looked much improved, wrapped with clean bandages and breathing steadily. Rosie looked at him and was glad that his parents wouldn't lose two sons that day.

The afternoon drew towards sunset. Rosie took out her book while there was still light, and traced Mr. Frodo's handwriting; she thought of holding the hand that had set down those letters, and smiled till she thought her heart might burst for joy, till she had to sing. Only one song seemed to fit this day, all its joy and loss both, so she sang the song about the Western Lands, the song that had come to her the day she knew Sam would come back. She sang others for variety, as she did her chores, but time and again she returned to that song.

Rosie was still singing it that evening when she heard the lads return. She was cooking, making a pie with some of her preserves and some of the carefully saved white flour; with her hands full of pastry she didn't turn round to greet them at first, but sang to finish the verse. "_...The Elven-stars as jewels white / Amid their branching hair._"

A voice came from behind her, a strong full voice, threaded with wonder. "_Though here at journey's end I lie /In darkness buried deep, / Beyond all towers strong and high, /Beyond all mountains steep..._"

Rosie spun round, holding the lump of dough. Sam stood in the kitchen doorway, Mr. Frodo beside him, a star in his hand; it was Sam who was singing, his eyes fixed on her, tears on his cheeks. "_Above all shadows rides the Sun /And Stars for ever dwell, / I will not say the Day is done /Nor bid the Stars farewell._" He took a deep breath, smiled even though more tears rolled down his face, went on singing, "_Nor bid the Stars farewell._"

Rosie gaped, threw down the dough, hastily scrubbed her hands in her apron. "Sam! Is that your song, Sam?" She flung her arms round his neck and he kissed her, tasting of tears; then he asked, "How did you know it, Rosie?"

"I don't rightly know." She looked at Mr. Frodo; the star in his hand was a shining white jewel, and he held it even as he took her hand between his two, so that it lay cool and radiant beneath her palm. "It came to me in the Spring, the day I knew you were coming back to me."

"What day was that, Rosie?" asked Mr. Frodo, gently stroking her hand. Sam's arms tightened round her waist. "March, late March....March Twenty-Fifth," she replied, and they looked at each other, as if they might kiss each other right there in the kitchen for all the Cottons to see.

But, they didn't. Instead they both looked at her again, gazes warm as hands. "That _is_ my song," Sam said, as Rosie reached up to wipe the tears from his cheeks. "If I might call it so. It came to me, too, in a moment so dark---" he shook his head, closing his eyes as more tears spilled forth; Mr. Frodo took one hand from Rosie's to press Sam's shoulder. "It came to me, when we needed it."

"And now Rosie has brought it to us again, when we need it." Mr. Frodo's eyes were brighter than the jewel in his hand. "Bag End was a sad dark sight, Rosie, and all the worse, as Sam said, because it is home. And what we found there..." It was his turn to trail off and shake his head, Sam's turn to reach for him and squeeze him reassuringly. "We needed hope today, and we needed it in your voice." He kissed her brow, lips soft and cool. "Thank you, Rosie."

"Oh, Mr. Frodo, my Sam." Rosie looked up at them; she felt tears spill down her own cheeks, but paid them no heed. "'Tis only the hope you brought to us." Their answering smiles were sweet and unshadowed, filling her with an aching-sharp joy.


	7. Rosie's Year

  
  
  
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_ **Rosie's Year, 7/9. PG-13** _

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: Seven of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Frodo/Sam/Rosie, Tom/Mari, Jolly/Buttercup, Nick/Andy, others discussed  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present. So will nonexplicit violence and occasional angst.  
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.

The next day Tom drove up to Hobbiton and Overhill with Nibs, Gaffer Gamgee, and a well-wrapped Robin, while Farmer Cotton went with Sam and Mr. Frodo and his companions to Michel Delving to empty the Lockholes. When Nick heard of their errand he begged to go; when his father explained about Andy Hamwich, Mr. Frodo brought Nick up onto his own pony. As they waited, Buttercup actually bounced with impatience, seeming almost her old self; Rosie's own hope was mingled with worry, for the tales they'd heard of the Lockholes had been some of the worst all year, but she couldn't've said anything to dampen Buttercup's newfound cheer even if she'd wished to.

Meanwhile, there were chores, always chores, and extra chores that had been neglected the day before and that the lads weren't around to do today; the cows and goats especially were quite unhappy. Rosie reminded herself that keeping busy made the day fly, and hummed to herself as she worked. Indeed, it seemed hardly any time at all till evening, when they returned with Andy and Mrs. Hamwich, and Buttercup and Rosie ran out to meet them.

The Hamwiches looked pale, and much thinner, and Sam was nearly carrying Mrs. Hamwich while Andy was clutching Nick; when Buttercup saw them she stopped short, shock washing across her face, before she firmed her jaw, put on a smile, and ran down the steps to embrace her mother and kiss her brother.

Over supper they traded stories; the soup ended up being well-seasoned with tears, but they were healing tears. Mr. Hamwich had died of a fit, before Andy had even set out for the Lockholes; Andy had made it to Michel Delving without being caught, and when he'd asked to see his parents he'd been promptly locked up for his "cheek". Seen close up, he had more than a few fading bruises, including an egg over his right eye, and his mouth was a thin line of pain while Nick stroked his hair and Mrs. Hamwich told how in late September the guards had cut the rations even further and had begun beating the prisoners. Then Buttercup looked down into her dish and held Jolly's hand as she told of going to work for Lotho Sackville-Baggins, of how terrified she'd been of Sharkey and his lackey the Worm, of Lotho's rages and how he'd beaten her; her mother sobbed as she listened, stroking Buttercup's hair, and Andy bit his lip and clutched Nick's hand.

After all that, nearly everyone at the table brightened to hear Farmer Cotton tell that Lotho, Sharkey, and Grima the Worm were all dead; only Mr. Frodo winced, looking pale, and only Sam and Rosie saw. Sam reached beneath the table for Mr. Frodo's hand; he glanced up to see Rosie's concerned look and smiled at her, and after a moment so did Mr. Frodo.

That night, Rosie was brushing her hair when someone scratched at her door. She opened it and smiled ear to ear. "Sam."

"Rosie." Sam was in his nightshirt, a candle in his hand. Rosie drew him in. "How long can you stay?"

Sam blushed, almost glowing in the candlelight. "The night, if you'll have me."

"If!" Rosie had just enough presence of mind to take the candle from his hand before she threw herself on him; as he kissed her he wound his arms round her waist and lifted her clear off the floor, and for awhile there weren't any more words.

However, sometime in the midst of things, Sam began to sob; when he raised his hands to Rosie's cheeks his face swam before her, and she realized her own eyes were full of tears. "Rosie," Sam murmured, "Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. I thought I'd never see you more." Rosie opened her mouth, but a sob came out; Sam kissed her, his tears falling on her face, and they were weeping and kissing and holding each other as if they'd never again let go.

"Sam," Rosie gasped against his mouth, between the sobs racking her. "Oh, Sam." She kissed his tear-covered cheeks as he shook in her arms. It had been such a long year, long and sad and full of darkness. "You're here. You're back."

"I am. I'm back." The tears were easing, like a summer shower, but in their passing it was more needful to hold than to tumble. They held each other till the trembling eased; Rosie wiped both their faces with a corner of her sheet, and Sam gave her a smile still damp round the edges. Her own smile was no better, she knew, but she gave it anyway. "So, Sam," she said, her voice deliberately light, "tell me how your year went." Sam nodded and pulled her closer, burying his face in her hair, and began to speak.

Oh, the tale he told, murmuring into Rosie's hair till the candle guttered, till his voice went hoarse, till her head fairly spun. Of Mr. Bilbo's magic Ring, and how it was discovered to be the strongest weapon of the Enemy and had to be destroyed; of meeting Elves, high and full of light; of the vicious trees by the Withywindle, and Tom Bombadil and his lady Goldberry; of Strider who turned out to be the lost King, now returned; of their perilous journeys, chased by Black Riders and Mr. Frodo hurt---- how Sam trembled as he told that ---- racing darkness to an Elven house called Rivendell, and then setting out again on their terrible errand to the Black Land. Rosie held Sam all through his tale, gently stroking him, feeling his ribs, feeling new muscles, feeling new scars. He was so changed, and he'd been so far away; she stopped him in the midst of his tale of the mighty Dwarf city of Moria, overrun by orcs and worse creatures, to push him back so she could look at his eyes. "Rosie?" he asked, puzzled.

"I just need to see your face," she answered, stroking her hand up over his cheek and brow, finding a scar beneath her fingers there as well, but his eyes were as brown and deep and warm as ever. "I never thought I'd hear such a tale from Sam Gamgee. I had to make sure 'twas you."

Sam grinned and kissed her wrist. "'Tis me, Rosie my lass," he said, and the smile stayed. "It does rather beat all, don't it? And I haven't told you the half of it yet, and Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, you should hear their tales."

"And I want to, and I will, but tomorrow you're back to Hobbiton, we should sleep at least a little." She raised her head to kiss him, but the kiss he gave her was not a goodnight kiss. "Rosie," he said, and his cheeks were pink, and his eyes were darkly shining in the candlelight, and she felt a different sort of warm. "Sam," she replied with a wide smile, and pulled him down for another kiss, and this time the tumble went off quite well indeed.

 

*

 

Rosie woke up late and alone in the bed, and with Nibs gleefully shaking her. "Rosie, it's breakfast-time!" he said cheerfully. She opened her eyes to glare, and pulled her pillow out, but he jumped back. "You can't hit me, Rosie, I'm wounded!"

"You'd best go before you're wounded worse," she growled, sitting up and rubbing heavy eyes. Nibs laughed and darted away.

At least Sam looked tired, too, and when she came out to breakfast he went red and smiling, and Mr. Frodo clearly hid a smile in his tea. Rosie's Mam was smiling, too, as she gave Rosie a cup of tea; Rosie choked on the first sip and nearly spat it out, it was so bitter.

_Bitterroot_, Rosie thought. She turned to look at her mother, who winked, and felt her cheeks burn; fortunately, everyone else was distracted when Nick and Andy wandered in to breakfast even later, hand in hand, looking sleepy and happy. Jolly made a bawdy joke, and his mother rapped him on the ear with her spoon, and Rosie laughed and looked round at her family, the bitter tea sweetened by happiness.

A little while before second breakfast, Rosie was shredding cheese for a baked pudding when she heard delighted screeching at the door, just before a redheaded blur attacked her. "Rosie!" cried Marigold, and Rosie turned in her grasp and enthusiastically returned the squeeze. "Mari!"

"Oh, Rosie." Marigold kissed her on her cheeks, then stood back a bit, hands on her shoulders. "You look fair as your namesake. Where's my brother?"

"Splitting firewood. He insisted." They both rolled their eyes and grinned, and Mari let go to run through the mudroom door. Tom came up the hallway, carrying a bag under his arm and looking like his feet hardly touched the floor. "She's come to visit," he told Rosie unnecessarily, as they listened to Marigold scream with joy on seeing Sam. "Daisy said 'twas high time Marroc's sister came down to help her, now that folk may travel again, so she sent Mari to see you and Sam."

"And you," Rosie said with a grin, and Tom grinned back.

So the day passed in company; after elevenses Sam and Mr. Frodo set out for Hobbiton, and Rosie felt their absence, but she had for company Marigold, cheerful as she'd ever been, and Buttercup, smiling more than she had in months. Mrs. Hamwich sewed a fine seam, so she sat in the chimney corner with the mending while the lasses sat together and wept and chattered and giggled. Mari told them of how big Daisy's babes were growing, and Rosie described Sam's return, and they teased each other on their brothers and teased Buttercup on Jolly and had a lovely day.

Sam and Mr. Frodo returned from Hobbiton after tea-time, looking tired but not as heartsick as before; Sam had a few sheets of paper, salvaged from somewhere, and Rosie found her bottle of oak ink so he and Mr. Frodo might settle at the kitchen table sketching and talking over plans to restore Bag End and the holes below the Hill. Rosie made them tea and toast, leaning near to hear whenever she could, till Mr. Frodo caught her at it, and smiled and waved her over. "We could use your thoughts on this, Rosie," he said, and she blushed, but she went and sat beside Sam.

"It'll be a lot of work," Mr. Frodo said as he turned back to Sam. "I don't know if you can do all of that." Sam firmed his jaw, and Mr. Frodo's smile tilted a little as he raised his hand, brushing it quickly across Sam's cheek before dropping it to squeeze his shoulder. "I do not doubt you," he said firmly. "I never doubt you, Sam. But it'll take a lot of time for one hobbit to do, and it's late in the year already."

"But, Mr. Frodo," Sam replied, "if it's to be as it was, we can't be calling in hobbits who don't know how it was before." Rosie had been listening since before she sat, but at this she laughed, and Sam looked at her with those great brown eyes. "Samwise Gamgee," she said cheerfully, "stubborn as ever. You're planning to do all Bag End by yourself, do I hear aright?" Sam nodded; beyond him Mr. Frodo smiled and shook his head. "Because you're the only hobbit living who ever was in there?"

"Mr. Frodo's Deputy Mayor, and Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin are busy with flushing out the last ruffians---" Sam stopped when Rosie tossed her hair. Mr. Frodo looked as if he might laugh. "I knew Bag End near as well as you do, once," Rosie told Sam. "And what of Marigold? And my brothers? You have all the help you need, Sam, if you'll just ask." She kissed him to sweeten her words, and when she sat back his eyes were shining. "Thank you, Rosie, we did indeed need your help," said Mr. Frodo, and she blushed and smiled.

 

*

 

Sam came to her room again that night. A far corner of Rosie's mind wondered if Mr. Frodo could spare him two nights running, but she was only made of flesh and blood, so her mouth kissed him rather than asking. Afterwards, he took up his story, telling her of the Golden Wood of the Elves and its fair mighty Lady.

"Sam," Rosie asked, stroking her fingers through his hair, "Do you remember, the first time you ever saw Mr. Frodo? When you told me an Elf was come to Bag End?" She felt his cheek heat against her breast and smiled. "For all my days," he murmured, and she trailed her fingers over his brow. "Why do you ask?"

"Is he like an Elf?" Rosie kept stroking Sam's face, looking down into his hair. There was a scar hidden there as well; hadn't he said orcs had attacked them in the ruined Dwarves' city? "Now that you've met so many and all."

Sam considered that for a moment. "He is, and he ain't. I mean, they're taller by far." They both smiled. "But they have a light about them, and Mr. Frodo, he has a light like it, and all the more so after all we've been through." Sam sighed. "And I've been yammering on and on. What of your year, while we were gone?"

Rosie looked down as Sam looked up, and saw shadows in his eyes, and wondered what he saw in hers. "The year?" she said, trying to find a story in it. "Naught like yours. No Elves or Dwarves or wizards." Sam smiled at that, stroking her arm. "And the Men, well, they were more like those orcs than like the mighty fair Men you tell me of."

"True indeed," Sam replied. "So said we all when we saw them. Lord Boromir, Lord Faramir, King Elessar, they ain't like the ruffians at all." His gaze went distant for a moment, then back to her face. "But there were mighty deeds this year, Rosie, mark my words. You helped hold this family together, that's a mighty deed, too, and I'd like to hear of it."

"Oh, Sam." Rosie blushed again, and he smiled and wriggled up to kiss her encouragingly, so she began to speak. When she spoke of Marigold's letter he kissed her brow; when she spoke of how Lotho Pimple had treated Mari his fist clenched and then unpeeled one finger at a time. She told of the Rules and the 'redistribution' and the tightening web of indignities, and Sam nodded sadly and stroked her hair. When she told of Ted Sandyman's toll-taking both of Sam's fists clenched, and he growled, "that Sandyman had best hope our paths don't cross again." Hearing that did send a thrill through her, Rosie had to admit to herself; she laid a hand on his cheek and kissed him for reply.

When Rosie opened her eyes again, she caught a glimpse of Sam's hand, of the scars on the back of it. She didn't ask, she wasn't asking, but she reached for that hand to run her fingers over the scars, and Sam gently pushed her curls back from her forehead and gave her a rueful smile. "I'm a bit banged up," he said, and she shook her head fiercely. "There's a tale of honor behind each and every scar, Sam Gamgee, I just know it. And you'll tell them to me, will you?"

"I will, Rosie," Sam promised, and then he yawned, and she smiled, and yawned herself. "But not tonight." They kissed again, long and slow and sweet, and Rosie drifted off to sleep with her Sam in her arms.

 

*

 

Was it a distant cry, or Sam's startle beside her, that jolted Rosie awake? Sam was already sitting up, holding his breath, listening. "Mr. Frodo," he whispered, and as she blinked up at him Rosie felt for a moment as if she'd vanished. But then Sam turned to her to kiss her brow, his palm sliding up her throat to cup her cheek. "Beg your pardon, Rosie, Mr. Frodo needs me," he whispered, and slipped out of bed and was gone, leaving her lying beside a hollow in the mattress still warm from his body.

Rosie sat up, resting her hand on the warm spot in her bed. She heard Sam slip down the hall, a door open, faint ragged sobbing. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms round them, looking into the darkness, swallowing hard as her eyes prickled. Mr. Frodo needed Sam, seemingly more than ever; Rosie yearned to go to him herself, to see if she could help Sam drive back whatever fear had come to Mr. Frodo in the night. And yet....when would Sam be hers? When would she know he wouldn't need to climb out of her bed at Mr. Frodo's call?

She pressed her hand to her eyes and took a deep shaking breath. The sobbing down the hall faded into silence. Sam would always be Mr. Frodo's, just as he was hers, she reminded herself. She had chosen, a week after that Lithe, to have them both as she could, knowing she could never have all of either. Thinking on Sam's wide brown eyes, Mr. Frodo's smile, Sam's arms warm around her, she knew she had chosen well, knew she was fortunate indeed.

Even so, it was cold, sitting there by herself in the dark.

 

*

 

When Rosie made her bleary-eyed way to breakfast that morning her mother gave her a sharp look and drew her aside. "Rosie, you need your sleep," she said without preamble. Rosie blushed and looked away, and saw that Sam and Mr. Frodo weren't at breakfast yet. "I'll be fine, Mam," she said absently, wanting just to sit down and have some tea.

Her mother snorted. "You'll fall over, is more like." In a softer voice she added, "I know, lass, he was gone for a year. But you both need sleep, and bitterroot don't always work. Your Dad thinks the world of Sam, after all the lad's done; it'd be a shame if he had to knock him on his ear." Rosie laughed helplessly at that, and nodded. "All right, Mam, all right."

Sam arrived at breakfast yawning and alone; when he sat beside Rosie she leaned over to kiss his cheek and whispered, "Mr. Frodo?"

"He's well," Sam whispered back. "He left early for Michel Delving. Will you come with me to Hobbiton?"

That thawed the last lingering chill of the night before. "Of course," Rosie replied, and Sam gave her a smile so delighted she kissed him for it, even though her brothers hooted at them.

So she asked her father's leave, and packed them a basket as quickly as she could. Sam put her up before him on his pony and wound his arms round her waist, holding her warmly as she took a deep breath that smelled of winter and sunshine and pony and freedom, as she felt the wonderful absence of walls.Throwing her arms out like a child, like an uncaged creature, Rosie turned her face to the sky and laughed for delight, crying "I've not been out in so long!" Even the pony's bouncy trot felt to Rosie like she rode the wind, not least when Sam nestled his face into her hair and kissed her ear. "I'm glad you're with me, Rosie," he told her. "Bag End's in a bad way indeed."

"Buttercup said," she told him. Sam nodded into her hair, and his arms round her waist tightened as he continued, "Besides....last night. I..." He trailed off and just held her for a bit, as the pony made its way down the lane, as she leaned into his sturdy warmth and waited.

"Mr. Frodo's had a cruel time of it," he said at last. _You also, Sam, with all those scars,_ Rosie thought, but didn't say. "If anything, Rosie, he needs me more now. Can you---"

Rosie turned a bit, laying her fingers to Sam's mouth. "I can, and I do," she told him. "I thought on this last night. You've always been his Sam."

"I'm also your Sam." His voice was hushed with wonder. "And you're my Rosie, my marvelous lass, and I love you."

Rosie thought she might float right off the pony. She clutched a handful of Sam's cloak and turned as far as she could and kissed him, right there on the pony, in the middle of the road.

 

*

 

Bag End, unfortunately, looked as horrible as Buttercup had described and Sam had warned, if not worse. The garden was all but gone to mud and boards, the door hung open, and by the time Rosie had taken two steps into the dank filthy wreck of the place she was pressing her hands to her mouth and fighting tears; Sam embraced her gently, and she thought of how he must have felt, and Mr. Frodo beside him, coming home to this, and the tears won.

Even so, tears wouldn't wash Bag End clean. Soon enough, Rosie wiped her eyes and set to work clearing rubbish from the small parlor; Sam helped her, and between the two of them they kept each other from feeling too overcome by the size of the job, even making a noticeable dent in the mess before they sat on the front steps and ate their basketful of luncheon. As they ate, Rosie looked out across the muddy expanse, struggling to remember Sam's beautiful garden, and leaned her head on his shoulder. "Why did he do it, Sam?" she asked like a child. "Lotho Sackville." He hardly deserved the name Baggins, she rather thought. "Why'd he want to live in this?"

"Mr. Frodo says he didn't, that Sharkey brought him to it." Sam shrugged. "Me, well, all I know is how much work is left to undo it."

"Work I'll help you in, Sam, and so will Mari and the lads." She kissed his cheek, and felt him smile.

So the days settled out into a pleasant pattern. Three days a week the Cottons walked or drove out to Hobbiton and helped Sam. He hired Hobbiton lads to clear up the sand-pit and smialers to dig new holes, but Rosie and Mari and Rosie's brothers helped him with Bag End and filled it with songs and cheerful chatter as they worked, and sometimes Daddy Twofoot's younger sons came by as well to lend their backs to the heavier lifting. Jolly stayed home in Bywater most days, because Buttercup couldn't bear to return to Bag End, not that anyone blamed her.

Mr. Frodo, meanwhile, spent those three days of the week in Michel Delving; he got the Post started again, but most of his work was sorting out the Shirrifs, the ones who'd tried to do good from the ones who bullied, the ones who'd been Shirrifs before from the ones who had joined in the past year, the ones who wanted to keep the job from the ones who ought to keep it. He came home late from this work, not always even by dinner-time, looking pale and worn and holding his star-jewel; Sam always knew when Mr. Frodo was arriving, so Rosie followed him out, and as they helped him off the pony Mr. Frodo's weary face lit in a smile.

The nights settled out into a pattern, too. The night after that first trip to Hobbiton Sam blushed at bedtime and told Rosie that her Mam had told him to let her sleep; she blushed like a coal, but she slept like a log. The next night she went to bed too anxious to sleep, wondering if Sam meant to let her alone again; when a knock sounded at her door she leapt up, her heart in her throat.

It was Sam, and he kissed her, but he didn't come in. "Will you come with me?" he asked, and she smiled as she took his hand. "Of course, Sam."

Mr. Frodo was waiting for them, looking like a child in a hand-me-down nightshirt, but no child ever had such eyes. "Rosie," he said, holding out his hands, and she went to him; he felt fragile in her arms, and his kiss was gentle. "I thought I'd let you and Sam have a few nights," he said, with a smile that was nearly a grin, "but I'm an impatient hobbit."

Rosie laughed, and kissed his cheek, which felt almost translucent beneath her lips, as if she kissed a ghost; but he was solid and warm in her arms, smiling at her with those same blue eyes. "It's good to have you, Mr. Frodo."

"It's good to be here." They sat down, Sam on her other side; she reached a hand to Sam as she leaned her head against Mr. Frodo's chest, rubbing her cheek against the soft shirt as he gave a little murmur of pleasure. It felt just as lovely as it ever had, to be between them, feeling them smiling at each other as they both held her. She opened her eyes to look up at Mr. Frodo, but her gaze was caught by a patch of collarbone and shoulder, revealed when her head had dragged down the nightshirt.

Between collarbone and heart, paler still against paleness, stretched a long thick scar. Rosie thought herself grown used to scars, as she'd worked at learning Sam's, but this was something else again. She gasped and reached towards it, but stopped herself when Mr. Frodo went stiff. "Oh, sir, I---"

"Rosie." Mr. Frodo reached up to take her hand and press it to the scar, which lay chill beneath her fingertips. His eyes were weary, his smile sad. "I'm rather hideous," he said wryly, and Rosie heard Sam gasp just as she did. "You are _not_," Sam said hotly while Rosie's mouth still hung open. "You are the fairest hobbit---" Sam broke off, and Rosie turned to find him looking at her with his big eyes, and she smiled at him reassuringly. "He is, Sam," she agreed, and turned back to Mr. Frodo. "You're the fairest hobbit I ever saw either," she told him, hand still pressed to that cool scar, and Mr. Frodo's smile lightened like the dawn, before he kissed her with just a touch of that old bossiness.

Rosie wondered, with a little thrill, if he might want to tumble her that night; but he sat back, and reached up for Sam, who leaned forward to kiss him, and then sighed. "I think I should lie down," he said, tugging both their hands. "Come keep me warm?" They snuggled him between them, laying their hands over his heart, and he sighed and went to sleep. Rosie looked at Mr. Frodo's sleeping face, and Sam watching him from beneath heavy eyelids; as she reached over to stroke Sam's eyes shut she thought that it was worth it, no matter what, to be here so with them.

So the nights went, not every night but more than many. By a candle's light----Mr. Frodo never slept in darkness----they would whisper the tale of their journey, and pull out the story of Rosie's year from her. Their tale was dark, darker than Rosie could ever have imagined, and at times one of them would fall silent, looking into shadows, until Rosie kissed him till he smiled again. Even so, Rosie needed to know, no matter how hard it was to hear, and they seemed to need to tell her. Sometimes, Mr. Frodo would tell Rosie how brave and strong Sam was, and she would stroke his red face as he grinned; sometimes, Sam would describe Mr. Frodo shining with light and power, and he would close his eyes and smile as she kissed his cheeks. Always when Sam and Mr. Frodo could speak no more, they would simply all hold each other against the memories and the darkness till sleep finally took them. Sam would wake Rosie with a kiss before dawn, and send her or walk with her back to her room; half the time Mr. Frodo was already awake, and he would stroke Rosie's cheek and kiss her, always gently.

Rosie and Sam weren't the only ones in the halls of night. Mari was visiting, of course. Andy kept his things in his mother's room, but left her the bed to herself; she watched her son, recovering on Mrs. Cotton's and Rosie's cooking and the chores of a winter farm, just as Rosie and her Mam watched Nick smiling again as he stood beside Andy, and they all smiled to see it. Buttercup, however, still slept in her room. She had done most of the nursing until Jolly was healed enough to rise from bed, and since the battle they'd been twining their fingers again, but Jolly never teased her anymore nor touched her aside of her hands, and sometimes when he didn't think anyone saw him he looked at her with worry plain on his face.

One night in late November, as the rain beat at the windows, Rosie was the one in the middle, curled up warmly with Mr. Frodo's cheek on her hair and Sam's arm across her waist. She was just dozing, dreaming of a high white city, when she heard Mr. Frodo whisper, "Whatever It made me say, Sam, you knew I love you?"

"Always, Mr. Frodo," Sam replied softly. "Always." Rosie opened an eye; the candle was already guttering, but she could see them gazing at each other. Mr. Frodo raised his hand to Sam's cheek, and Sam kissed the palm, and Mr. Frodo smiled. Rosie closed her eyes again, wondering what bits of their tale she would never hear, reflecting that likely she should be glad to not know.

That morning she woke before Sam did; both he and Mr. Frodo were soundly and peacefully asleep. When she eased herself out the door and glanced up the hall she saw Buttercup kissing Jolly as she let him out of her room. Rosie smiled with relief, watching another hurt from the long year now mending, and smiled wider at the dazed grin on Jolly's face.

Unfortunately, when he saw her, he marked what door she stood at, and the grin turned to a frown. "Rosie!" Jolly hissed, striding forward. "Why ain't you in bed?"

"I might ask you the same," she teased, but he wouldn't have it. "That's Mr. Frodo's room," he said accusingly, hands on his hips.

"What of it?" Rosie asked, though a knot was winding in her belly. If Jolly crossly went and told their parents, well, it didn't bear thinking on. "Sam sleeps there, I was bidding him good morn."

Jolly didn't look mollified. Rosie walked down to her room, past his, and he followed her in and leaned against her door with crossed arms. "Sam would give Mr. Frodo anything he asked," he said bluntly. "Is that what it is?"

"No, Jolly," Rosie shook her head, though she folded her arms. "Mr. Frodo's our friend."

"What sort of friend would use you both so, and Sam as a cover?" Rosie gasped at that, and bit her lip to control herself. "It ain't like that! What Sam and I do is our business, Jolly."

"Not under this roof, it ain't!" Rosie nearly replied to that with, _and are you Da?_, but took a deep breath and thought better. Jolly _was_ her father's son, heir to his trick of covering worry with anger. "Sam loves me," she said, holding her hands out; Jolly huffed, but he took them. "We all have our sweethearts again, Jolly. I'm happy for you. Be happy for me?"

"I am, Rosie." He squeezed her hands. "I just don't want you interfered with. Mr. Frodo, well, his eyes light on you." She smiled at that, though her heart clenched within her. "He's my friend, Jolly, gentlehobbit or no. There's no having Sam without him." That was truer than she'd meant to say, but Jolly nodded at that, and finally smiled.

 

*

 

In early December Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin came to dinner, full of cheer and bringing a gift of pipeweed from a recently discovered cache of the ruffians. They sat with Sam and Mr. Frodo in the parlor, talking and smoking; that night when Sam came to Rosie's room he looked hopeful, cradling a little box in his hands. "Did I ever show you my gift from the Lady?" he asked; Rosie shook her head, looking at the finely carven wooden box. "It's earth from her garden," he told her, opening it to display a fine grey dust. "With all the trees as have been cut down, I thought, and Mr. Frodo and Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin agree, that this might help me make it up."

Rosie wasn't sure what Sam meant, so she leaned on his shoulder and waited. "I'm going to plant trees," he continued. "All over the Shire, and give them each a pinch of this. I can't make it the way it was, but I can help."

"Oh!" Rosie looked up at Sam, seeing in his eyes the Shire renewed, covered with young trees reaching towards the Sun. "Sam, that's lovely!" she cried, and he smiled as if he'd needed those words, cupping her cheek in his hand. "I'll be gone for days on end," he told her solemnly. "Tomorrow I leave for Buckland with Mr. Merry, to find some likely saplings. Bag End's coming on well; will you keep an eye on it for me?"

"And boss my brothers? That I can!" Sam laughed, his fingers stroking her face. "And shall I keep an eye on Mr. Frodo?" Rosie asked in a softer voice, and Sam nodded and smiled gratefully, drawing her up for a kiss. "And give him this one," he breathed over her mouth, sending heat shivering down through her, and she pressed herself to him as he kissed her again.

Sam wound his arm round Rosie, kissing her cheek and brow and temple. "I saw all this in the Lady's Mirror," he murmured into her hair, as she kissed his shoulder. "The ruffians, the ruin, my Gaffer turned out. All of it. And still and all I chose to go on with Mr. Frodo."

"You couldn't've stopped it, Sam." Rosie kissed his throat. "Mr. Frodo needed you. Now you're the hobbit you need to be, with the gift in your hand, to mend it." She felt him smile into her hair, as his hand stroked down her back. "You'll make the Shire whole and sound again."

"Rosie," he sighed, holding her close; then his tone changed. "I'll be back time and again, and surely for Yule." She looked up, and was that a naughty smile on his face? "I'll be back to dance it, and Mr. Frodo said he'll be waiting for me. Will you dance Yule with us, Rosie? We've missed you."

"Sam Gamgee," Rosie replied with her most inviting smile, and Sam's cheeks glowed a delighful red in the candlelight. "Of course I will."


	8. Rosie's Year

_ **Rosie's Year, 8/9. PG-13** _

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: Eight of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Frodo/Sam/Rosie, Tom/Mari, Jolly/Buttercup, Nick/Andy, others discussed  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present. So will nonexplicit violence and occasional angst, as will original characters and fleshed out "just-a-name" characters..   
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.

Yule had brought a smooth, shining frosting of snow over the Eastfarthing; Rosie wiggled her toes in it and laughed, as she and her brothers and their sweethearts stood in the yard of a bright morning. Sam and Mari were returning to Hobbiton, but they didn't want to leave yet nor did the Cottons want them to go, so they watched Andy and the three younger Cotton lads throwing snowballs at each other. Nick grabbed Andy and shoved snow down his neck, and Andy wrestled him down and kissed him, and everyone laughed in the winter sunshine.

Even as Rosie stood with Sam's arm round her waist, laughing with snow around her toes, she felt Mr. Frodo standing behind them, hands in his pockets. It was three days since their three-part Yule dance, but she still tingled with his nearness, as she had that day they'd had tea after Lithe; it was, as ever, one thing to lie beside a hobbit of nights, and another to be held in his arms and to hold him within. There had been days before they'd gone away, when Rosie had touched Sam as he looked at Mr. Frodo, and had felt him quiver with this same skin-memory; now, she knew, he would know where Mr. Frodo was whether he were across the room or across the smial. Rosie wondered if she also would after this strange lovely tingle wore off, and wished she could reach back that vast arm's length to take Mr. Frodo's hand in hers.

Jolly's teasing voice brought her back from her thoughts. "You'll have to get a family of your own, Nibs! Tom and Rosie have the Gamgees, me'n Nick have the Hamwiches." Buttercup, standing in the curve of Jolly's arm, giggled as he squeezed her; Sam squeezed Rosie, too, and she kissed him as Mr. Frodo's delighted laugh washed over them, as she felt his warm gaze.

"Oh, I think Nibs here will be fine," said Tom, chucking Nibs under his chin. "With this pretty scar on his cheek, just right for lasses to coo over." Nibs blushed, and his sibs laughed.

"We'd best be going," Sam put in reluctantly, and Mari pouted at him. Rosie reached for her hand and said, "Mam will fret if you don't." Mari's brows drew down, and Rosie tilted her smile wickedly and continued, "she worries she'll have to change the breakfast tea to bitterroot if you Gamgees stay." Mari gasped, then shrieked with laughter, tossing her bright hair in the sunshine, and Rosie squeezed her hand and laughed with her; Sam joined in, and drew Rosie up for another kiss. After a few more kisses and squeezes, Sam and Mari were on his pony riding away, while Rosie and Tom, Jolly and Buttercup waved and called cheerful goodbyes, and Nick and Andy and Nibs returned to throwing snowballs.

Rosie laughed at the three-way snowball fight; then, when she turned, she gasped at a cold shock as the snow hadn't given her. Tom and Jolly stood on either side of Mr. Frodo, respectful but glowering, looking dangerously broad and sturdy beside Mr. Frodo's pale slenderness. Rosie's breath caught in her throat, but all Tom said was, "Mr. Frodo, sir, might we have a word with you?" Frodo's gaze flickered past Tom to Rosie; then he nodded firmly, and in they went.

*

By bedtime, Rosie was ready to beat someone like cream in a churn. After their chat, Mr. Frodo vanished into his room and her brothers out to their chores; she caught up with Jolly at lunch and Tom at tea, but they both merely grinned and said, "We had a lads' talk." After supper, almost bouncing on her heels with frustration, she told Mr. Frodo what her brothers had said; he smiled warmly and replied, "well, that we did," and wandered off. Rosie clenched her fists, scrubbed the dishes within an inch of their crockery lives, then went to bed and brushed her hair till it crackled, until her arm grew weary and her spirit quieted somewhat.

That was when a soft knock sounded at her door.

Rosie startled, and gasped when she opened the door to find Mr. Frodo standing there in his nightshirt. He grinned mischievously at her, and she hauled him into the room before anyone might see him. "Sir, are you daft?" she demanded, and he laughed. "What's so funny?"

"Ah, Rosie, you should see your face!" He raised his hand to her cheek, a softer hand than Sam's but rougher than it had been before; she set her hands on her hips, but her eyelids drooped as she helplessly tilted her face into his touch. "Sir, d'ye want my family to think you're interfering with me?" she tried to ask sternly, but it came out a husky murmur.

Mr. Frodo's answering laugh was also a little rougher, a little warmer. "That's what your brothers asked me."

Rosie tensed. "They asked you---"

"Quite politely," he said reassuringly, trailing fingers across her cheek. "They wanted to be sure that I didn't have a claim on Sam, or on you, that would prevent your marriage."

"Our marriage?" Rosie's shock warmed to a smile. "Mr. Frodo, would you believe I've not thought on it yet? There's been so much to do, it's just been enough to have Sam home and safe night by night." She sat on her bed, and when he sat with her she took his arm and wound it round her waist. "But then, with Tom wedding soon, they would think on it for me."

"At least it wasn't your father who came to ask," he replied, smile still mischievous, and she couldn't help but laugh. "Mr. Frodo, you're as wicked as you ever were."

He kept smiling, but his eyes grew shadowed. "Not quite, Rosie, not quite. Even so, it's good that your brothers came to speak to me; it reminded me to speak with you. Sam does want to marry you, Rosie, more than anything."

"He might ask," Rosie replied, knowing her wide smile belied her tart tone. Mr. Frodo chuckled and nodded. "I'm sure he will, and soon. For my part, you know I want nothing more than I want to see you and Sam happy together?"

"Mr. Frodo." Rosie reached up to his cheek now, watching his eyelashes dip towards her fingers. "I know. I've ever known." He smiled, but when he looked at her again his eyes were still shadowed. "Ah, Rosie. I'm a selfish old hobbit," he said, entreaty in his voice.

"Sir, you ain't old, nor selfish," she said sternly, and he turned his face to kiss her palm. "Ah, Rosie. Thank you." Raising his hand to hers on his cheek, he searched her face with his shining eyes; Rosie didn't know what it was he sought, but his gaze made her heart ache, sweet and sharp. "You can't be old, Mr. Frodo," Rosie continued, trying to speak cheerfully. "You look near as young as Sam. Younger, even. "

And it had been true, a year before; Mr. Frodo had looked for years and years as if he were fresh from his tweens. But now, as she spoke, a shine in his hair caught her eye; Rosie looked up at him, at his smooth pale cheeks and deep blue eyes and dark waves of hair, and saw strands of silver amidst the dark, glinting gold in the candlelight. "Oh," she said, words failing.

Mr. Frodo saw in her face what she saw, and his smile was rueful. "The Ring was why I looked so young," he told her," and now It's gone, and everything built on Its power must fade. Including me."

"No!" She clutched him heedlessly. "No, sir, not when you just came back to us! After all you've suffered, all you've done! Sam and I, we'll have babes to lay in your arms, and you'll teach them their letters and be their wise gentle uncle and see them wed, you will!" Rosie forced her mouth to a smile, striving to cheer them both, but her eyes spilled over regardless. Mr. Frodo kissed Rosie's cheeks gently, and kissed her mouth, and she tasted the salt of her own tears. "It is as it must be, Rosie," he said gently.

Rosie opened her mouth, but caught herself before she could plead like a child. She pressed her lips together, as her mother might have, and after a moment was steady enough to say sensibly, "and may that be for years and years yet."

"As they are granted to me." Mr. Frodo kissed her again, and despite her words she held him as tightly as she might; when he made as if to release her she clung to him, plucking up her courage. "Stay with me?" she asked, smiling cheekily. "I'm not used to sleeping alone now, by your doing."

That won her a chuckle, and a distinctly warmer kiss, but Mr. Frodo shook his head. "Without Sam here, you can hardly take bitterroot and explain it to your mother." Rosie had to nod at that, her face going hot, and he laughed and stroked her burning cheek. "I would if I could," he said wistfully, before he kissed her again, laying her down, and this kiss was warm and damp enough to leave her tingling all over; he pulled her quilt up over her and brushed three gentle fingers across her cheek, his smile filling her vision as she closed her eyes.

 

*

 

The next day, Mr. Frodo went to Michel Delving, and he brought back ink and paper, and a sack of flour from a recently discovered cache. After supper he asked for Rosie's book, and wrote out the song that she and Sam had sung; she fanned his careful small square letters, and remembered the writing in the front. "Mr. Frodo, who besides you wrote in this book?"

He blew on the ink once more, and, satisfied that it was dry, turned to the front. "Bilbo, and a friend or two, but mostly my mother," he said, opening to a page filled with the rounded writing. Rosie gaped, and he laughed merrily. "Rosie, even I had parents."

"Mr. Frodo," she said reprovingly, "it ain't that. It's just, well, your mother started this book, and you gave it to me?"

"Who better to have it?" he said, voice warm, the look in his eyes like a kiss. Rosie's cheeks heated to pink, and she smiled bashfully in return.

So the winter went on, far better than the last. The inns reopened; the ale was dearer, but the hobbits understood why and returned in joyful droves. It took a great deal of work, but Bag End was emerging more beautiful and snug than ever; Rosie and Marigold polished and waxed and tucked herbs into all the linens while the lads finished the walls and doors and helped Sam replant the garden. Some days, Robin Sandheaver came by Bag End to visit, bringing lunch; his family had taken over the Mill, or rather, the land it had stood on, and were building a proper one. He still joked, but his clowning was much reduced; he smiled admiringly at Sam, and bashfully at Rosie, and she smiled back and they talked as ever, except that once she nearly asked after Freddy, till she remembered and bit her tongue and blinked prickling eyes.

It was not just kind but useful of Robin to feed them, and Rosie sometimes worried that his family might be going hungry for it. The Cottons' back cellar room had never been discovered, but even so things were a little thin by late winter. It almost became a game at suppertime, Jolly and Nick slipping bits of food onto Buttercup's and Andy's plates, Mr. Frodo and Sam trading morsels, Sam filling Rosie's plate from his when she wasn't looking. Mrs. Hamwich and Rosie's parents watched this all with narrowed eyes and rueful smiles over their own half-empty plates. Even so, they had more than many hobbits, after that lean year, and they knew it.

As if to make up for the winter, spring came bright and early and fertile. The hens began laying as if to repopulate the world with chicks; the gardens woke early, the earth and air seemed warm as milk before the end of February. One bright day in early March, Sam came to Bag End, a willow sapling over his shoulder, and Rosie walked out with him, holding his hand round his pony's reins; she looked up at Bag End's neatly laid out garden full of seedlings and net-covered seedbeds, and Sam pointed down the Hill to the Party Field where his brave little shaft of a silver _mallorn_ grew taller every day. They waved to the Gaffer, sitting in his new garden before his new hole, and saw the new Mill going up, and a new Grange where the Shirrif-house and some shacks had been.

They walked on to Bywater, past Sam's new saplings putting out tender spring leaves, past the barren sandy Battle Pit and the hobbits' grave, a mound already fuzzing with new green life; they stopped there for a moment, and Rosie laid her hand to it, feeling soft grass between her fingers and thinking of Freddy Sandheaver. At the Green Dragon they waved to the tweenage lad who stood on a ladder repainting the sign, and they walked on to Bywater Pool, past the row of smials on the north side, whose families had returned and were busily setting the places to rights. The hobbits paused in their work to hail Sam, who blushed and waved, and at the end of the row he took a tiny pinch from his box and blew it back towards their new gardens.

After a little wading, which should have been chilly but wasn't somehow, they came to the south bank, where the great old willow had shaded the bank and sheltered a thousand young hobbits' first kisses before the Men cut it down. Sam knelt beside the stump and patted it reverently, and Rosie stood beside it and watched him plant the willow sapling; he gave it a grain of his grey dust and teasingly admonished it to be good and not eat any hobbits. Rosie giggled at that, remembering the story he'd told her of the Old Forest, and she and Sam gave the new willow its first kiss to shade.

Then they walked back to the Cottons', while Sam praised Rosie's garden, which made her cheeks warm and also reminded her to ask. "Where did you ever find my rosebush, Sam?"

Sam smiled at that. "At Bag End, if you'll believe it, tucked between two tall bushes. Its sister's still there. I knew it was your rose when I saw its rich strong hips. Just like yours." Sam blushed and nudged her, and she laughed and kissed him, and laughed again when the pony snorted.

When she let him go he was still blushing, and Rosie looked up at him sidelong; he was biting his lip, brows drawn down, and she felt a little shiver of excitement. "Rose," he said, looking at the cobblestones, "I told you once, I had sommat to do before I might marry." Rosie nodded encouragingly, looking at the path ahead, hardly daring to breathe. "Well, I feel I've done it. I'm back now, for good and all; Mr. Frodo still needs me, but not as before, and you're my lass as you ever have been. So I've been thinking, and, well, if you like, if you'll still have me, Rosie, we might wed."

Now she did look at him full on, as he studied his toes. "Samwise Gamgee," Rosie all but sang, and he looked sidelong at her. "Sam Gamgee, you daft hobbit, who else would I have in all the Shire? Yes, of course I'll wed you!"

Sam just looked at her for a moment, eyes wide and mouth round; then he picked her right up off her feet as he pulled her to him, kissing her as if to make up for the whole absent year. Rosie wound her arms round his neck and her fingers into his hair and kissed him back, feeling his heart beating to hers, his arms strong round her waist, his hair twining round her hands, his lips pressed sweetly to hers. Her Sam was back.

Eventually, Sam had to put Rosie down. He let her slide down his chest till her toes touched the ground; he was pink and smiling ear-to-ear, and she reached up to touch his delighted face, to feel him with her. "Sam," she whispered, and he laid his hand to hers and smiled like he'd never stop. "Rosie."

Then his gaze flickered past her, and he called, "Hey, Bill!" Rosie turned to see the pony look back at Sam, as if it said, "are you two done yet?" and she began to giggle helplessly. "C'mon, Bill," Sam said, holding his hand out, and the pony ambled back to him, lipping his hair till he laughed. He took Bill's reins, and Rosie twined her hand with his, and they walked on down the springtime road in the sunshine.

After a bit, Sam asked, "so, when would you like? I can't think it'll take me long to find a hole for us, but you might not want to leave your family just yet."

"Oh, Sam. You've wasted a year, so why wait longer?" Rosie squeezed Sam's hand, and giggled as he drew himself up, squaring his broad shoulders. "Wasted?" he replied, his sparkling eyes completely ruining the stern look he strove for. "I wouldn't call it that!"

"Neither would I, Sam," she said honestly, and he reached over to cup her cheek and draw her into another kiss. "I'd wed you tomorrow, if we could."

Rosie hadn't thought Sam's face could light up even more, but he did. "Ah, Rosie," he breathed, and kissed her again for so long and so warmingly that when he let her go she blushed and let go of his hand and drew a steadying breath. "Any more of that, and we won't get home till evening," she told him, and he nodded and took a deep breath of his own, and they kept walking.

When they reached Twelve South Lane, Buttercup was in the garden, and she called to them, "come see! Strawberries!" They went over, and the strawberry plants were indeed covered in little hard white berries, weeks early. Rosie looked up from them at Buttercup, whose cheeks were nearly as pink as a strawberry ought to be, and smiled.

Then Sam, beside her, breathed, "strawberries," and when she looked at him his eyes were wet and shadowed. "Sam?" Rosie murmured, and he shook his head and smiled at her, scrubbing his sleeve across his eyes. "A lovely crop this year," he said, and Buttercup nodded, still looking at the plants; Rosie nodded, looking at Sam, and kissed his cheek.

 

*

 

It was mid-March, but the garden looked like May. Rosie and Buttercup stood in the middle of it, staring in wonder at the plants, which had seemingly grown overnight; the taller herbs were nearly as tall as the lasses, the creeping ones sprawling out into the pathways. A glint of red caught Rosie's eye, and she reached down and came up with a perfectly ripe strawberry nearly as big as her palm. Buttercup gasped, eyes shining; Rosie held it out to her, and she bit off half of it and pushed it back towards Rosie, and it was so sweet and perfect Rosie's eyes fell shut with the deliciousness of it.

A hoarse shout snapped her eyes open and her head around. "Rosie!" her father was calling; she dashed inside, Buttercup behind her, and ran down the hall towards his voice, and the sound of moaning, all of it coming from Mr. Frodo's room. _Oh, no,_ Rosie thought, and picked up her skirts and ran faster.

Mr. Frodo lay in his bed, pale and drenched, clutching his gem, moaning deliriously. "Now all is dark and empty," her ear picked out from the nonsense. Her father was bent over him, calling him, but Mr. Frodo didn't stir, just mumbled. "Rosie," her father said urgently to her, "you're his friend, call him. Buttercup, go find Mrs. Cotton for me." Rosie sat beside Mr. Frodo, glad of her father's blessing, and took his free hand; it was the wounded hand, and she stroked it, lacing her fingers through his limp ones. "Mr. Frodo," she said, "Mr. Frodo, sir. Wake up please, sir, wake up." When no one was looking she stroked his brow, and at that touch he quieted.

Buttercup returned with Mrs. Cotton, and a basin and rags. Rosie's mother moved to take her place, but her father shook his head. "I think Rose should do this," he said to her. "He's easing already." Rosie reached out a hand for the basin, not letting go of Mr. Frodo's; her mother looked at her sharply, then sighed, and handed it to her, and smiled as she laid a hand on Rosie's hair. "I'll be in to check," she told her daughter, and kissed her brow.

So, Rosie sat with Mr. Frodo all day, bathing his brow and calling to him as he struggled with the darkness. Her mother brought in another basin, this one full of steaming water and sharp herbs, and Rosie sat on the side of the bed and breathed the steam and sang till her voice went rough. Sometimes Mr. Frodo moaned and tossed, but mostly he lay in a strange swoon, and he never let go of the jewel, and she didn't let go of his hand.

Around tea-time Buttercup brought Rosie some bread and cheese, and a bowl of strawberries; Rosie nibbled absently as she hummed Sam's song. "_Nor bid the stars farewell_," she sang aloud.

The limp hand in Rosie's twitched. "Strawberries?" came a faint hoarse voice; Rosie turned and was delighted to find Mr. Frodo awake, waxen-pale but smiling. "Do I smell strawberries?"

"Indeed you do, Mr. Frodo," Rosie said, returning his smile with relief as she held the bowl on her lap where he could see it. "They're early this year."

"And lovely." She let go his hand so he might reach for them, but his hand wavered and sank to the coverlet. "You need some broth," she said sternly, and his smile only widened. "Please, Rosie," he asked, catching her with those blue eyes; she tried to shake her head, but it came out a nod. "One, Mr. Frodo," she said, "I won't have you bringing them up and sickening worse. One for now." She picked out the ripest, and held it to his lips; he closed his eyes, chewing slowly as if the effort wearied him, but the smile on his pale face warmed her heart. "Strawberries," he murmured, eyes still closed. Rosie glanced up, and seeing no one in the doorway, leaned over to kiss his brow, and he sighed, his face smoothing as he fell into a natural sleep.

 

*

 

"Rosie? Rosie!" She'd been dozing in a chair beside Mr. Frodo's bed, when the whisper of her name tapped at her ear until she woke. "Rosie?"

"Mr. Frodo?" Rosie opened her eyes to blackness; the candle must have gone out, and it was raining outside. "Sir, do you need---"

"It's dark, it's so dark." Even whispering, Mr. Frodo's voice shook; she reached forward with both hands until he found and clutched one, and reached up to wrap his other round her waist. "Rosie, please, come here."

Rosie wavered. To lie beside Mr. Frodo, without Sam to make sure she woke in time? But his hands pulled her with a desperate strength, and she couldn't deny him comfort, not now, not ever. She went, and he pulled her flush against him; he was shivering and damp again, cool and clammy. "Mr. Frodo, I'm here," she whispered, "but if you'll let me up I might light the candle."

He drew a deep breath, holding her tightly, but when he spoke again his voice was steady. "I've better, if you'll reach it for me. The second drawer of the nightstand. It's a glass." Rosie leaned over him, carefully striving to not lay her weight on him even as his tight-wound arms tugged at her, and found the drawer by feel. She rummaged through papers and pipes and little mathoms till a smooth curved item filled her palm; drawing it out, she found it heavy and cool.

Then it flared like a newborn star, and she gasped and nearly dropped it. White light poured between her fingers, showing Mr. Frodo's face, sweat glittering on his brow; his eyes caught the light and bounced it back as she looked in wonder from the glass to him and back again. "The Star-glass," he whispered, as she gathered her wits enough to dab his face with the sheet. "The Lady of Lorien's gift to me. Sam's told you of it. I should have thought of it before."

Rosie could only nod, staring at him by its glow. They'd told her of magic, but now she held a bit of magic in her plain little hand; thinking on that, she tried to press it into Mr. Frodo's hand, but he shook his head and smiled at her, weary and sweet. "No, Rosie. Hold it for me. Be my light." He drew her head to his shoulder, and she laid her hand with the Star-glass on his chest; Mr. Frodo closed his eyes, his entire body relaxing, and soon, despite being wrapped in Mr. Frodo's arms, despite holding a piece of radiant magic in her hand, Rosie's heavy eyes fell shut, the light glowing dimly through her eyelids as she fell back to sleep.

 

*

Fortunately, Rosie woke well before dawn, with Mr. Frodo easy enough that she could wriggle from his arms and climb out of the bed. As she tucked the Star-glass into his hand she looked at him, his dark hair damp on his pale brow, his face smoothed by sleep; missing his arms round her, she sighed ruefully as she curled up again in the hard chair.

Around dawn, Rosie's mother came and sent her stumbling off to her bed, and when she rose at elevenses Mr. Frodo was peacefully asleep, so she didn't see him awake again till suppertime. He lay in bed, weak but alert, his skin velvety and normally dry to the touch, and he laid his hand over hers on his arm and smiled. "Thank you, Rosie," he said, and she smiled and sat beside him. "Just mend, Mr. Frodo, that's thanks enough."

He smiled even more at that, and didn't let go of her hand. "I've been thinking," he said. "About Sam, and about you. You two should have a place of your own when you marry." Rosie opened her mouth to thank him, but he shook his head. "I can't give you that, unfortunately. It's not the right time for a Baggins to purchase land." His mouth twisted briefly; then he looked up at her again and smiled just a little. "However, I can offer you a little something, for all both of you have been for me. Would you like to move to Bag End, Rosie, when you're Mrs. Gamgee?"

Rosie gasped. "Bag End?" The beautiful smial at the top of the Hill, that she'd played in and learned her letters in as a child, cooked in and cleaned in all her life, and slept in beside Sam and Mr. Frodo of a few hidden, cherished nights? "Me, and Sam?" Mr. Frodo watched her face intently, and she realized with a shock that he was actually nervous, waiting for her reply. "Oh, sir, yes! Yes, I'd love to!" Mr. Frodo smiled at her, near as glad of her 'yes' as Sam had been, and she found herself leaning to kiss him and had to haul herself back and content herself with squeezing his hand. "Oh, Mr. Frodo, it'll be grand, you and Sam and me all together! We'll fill Bag End with happiness for you, you'll see."

"I know you will, Rosie," he replied, eyes shining, squeezing her hands in return.

And so it was all set. Mr. Frodo was up again the next day, and back to Michel Delving after that; that was where Sam saw him when he returned from a trip to Buckland bearing the news that Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin had come back with Mr. Frodo's things from Crickhollow. Rosie was out in the garden picking herb flowers in the evening when they rode up; the first thing she heard was Sam's laughter, and she looked up to see them together on Sam's pony Bill, Mr. Frodo holding Sam before him, as they led the other pony. Sam laughed again when he saw Rosie, and Mr. Frodo smiled over his shoulder at her; Sam jumped down and ran to her, and she ran out to the Road to meet him. "You planned it!" he cried, wrapping his arms round her waist to pull her off her feet. "You two! I'm overmatched between you, I surely am!"

"Sam!" Rosie shrieked, as he spun her round, then kissed her. When he set her down her head whirled with confusion as much as with the spin. "Sam?" she asked, but it was Mr. Frodo who replied, dismounting and leading both ponies over. "I told Sam how easy it would be for all of us to live in Bag End," he said, eyes twinkling with mischief, and Rosie understood with delight, and smiled. "Well, Mr. Frodo, it's just sense," she said, and Sam held her close as he reached a hand to Mr. Frodo, smiling at them both, tears in his eyes. "There's never been a luckier hobbit," Sam said, but Mr. Frodo shook his head as he took Sam's hand. "You deserve this, Sam," he murmured, and Rosie watched them look at each other, basking in their warmth like sunshine. "You deserve all happiness."

 

*

"I've brought your mail for you, Mr. Frodo," Rosie said when he opened Bag End's broad green front door. He smiled as he let her in, remarking, "you're much fairer than the usual Messenger," which made her giggle; he led her to his study and gave her some tea before he took the letters. Rosie sipped as Mr. Frodo read, looking out the window at Sam's rows of stakes, already well-climbed by plants. _Sam had to stake the tomatoes already?_ she thought, surprised. How things were growing this spring.

"Poor old Lobelia," Mr. Frodo said, sighing. "She's died." Rosie murmured something appropriate, not finding much sorrow within herself. "She arranged for a copy of her will to come to me." He looked it over as he spoke, and whistled. "Well, now! She left her money to me, to use to help hobbits unhoused by last year's Troubles!"

That 'last year' was sweet to hear, it was. "That's very kind of her!" Rosie said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster; Mr. Frodo looked over the parchment at her and laughed. "You weren't fond of her, Rosie, were you?"

Rosie felt her face burn. "Sir, I beg your pardon. I ain't trying to speak ill of the dead---"

"But you remember her as a horrid old harridan, and what her rearing of Lotho produced." He smiled at her, laying a hand on hers. "It's all right, Rosie. I'd think that as well, if I hadn't seen her the day we cleared the Lockholes, the day she learned of Lotho's death. She redeemed herself, in the end." His eyes looked into the distance for a moment, before his gaze returned to her face. "And by her doing, we have help to give."

"That we do, Mr. Frodo." Rosie smiled at him, curling her hand round his. "I might start a list." He gave her a piece of scrap parchment, and she jotted down some names as he kept reading, until he said, "She also returned all the property Lotho bought or stole in the past year to its previous owners. Your father's name is on the list, Rose Cotton." Rosie's head snapped up at that, and Mr. Frodo grinned at her. "You can tell him tonight, if it pleases you. Could you call Sam in for me?"

"Of course, sir!" Rosie set off through Bag End, proudly admiring how clean and neat and shining it all was, and went out the mudroom door. Sam was right where she thought he might be, weeding in the back garden. Well, he knelt as if he were weeding, but when she came over she found him with his palms on his thighs and his head tilted back, eyes closed, feeling the sunlight on his face; it poured over his skin and through his hair, till he almost glowed like the Star-glass, but with a warm golden light. Rosie stifled her gasp at how beautiful Sam looked in the sunlight, and crept closer as silently as she might. She'd nearly reached him when he sighed with pleasure and opened his eyes again, and jumped half out of his skin to find her a pace away.

"Hullo, Sam," Rosie said with a giggle, as his round-eyed shock warmed to a smile, and he reached up for her. "Rosie," he said, pulling her down into his arms, as she hiked her skirts round her knees to keep from kneeling on them. "You look lovely in the sunshine."

"I just thought the same of you." Sam blinked at her, and she smiled and kissed him. "Mr. Frodo sent me to fetch you."

That got Sam on his feet, though at least by her smile he knew there was no hurry. They went back inside hand in hand, and Mr. Frodo smiled up at them when they entered his study. "I think there's something we all need, my dears," he said. "Having moved back into Bag End, and with both your birthdays coming soon, I think we all need a good party."


	9. Rosie's Year

  
  
  
**Current mood:** |   
cheerful  
---|---  
  
_ **Rosie's Year, 9/9. PG-13** _

Title: Rosie's Year  
Chapter: Nine of Nine  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairings: Sam/Rosie, Frodo/Sam/Rosie, Tom/Mari, Jolly/Buttercup, Nick/Andy, others discussed  
Warnings: Across the course of the story, slash, het, and a threesome will all be present. So will nonexplicit violence and occasional angst, as will original characters and fleshed out "just-a-name" characters.. And occasionally a great deal of shmoop.   
Disclaimer: These characters and their setting belong to the estate of Professor Tolkien. This is an avocational work written only for love, not profit.

 

Mr. Frodo could be impatient when he had his mind set to something. Just a few days later, Rosie and Tom drove up to Hobbiton with things for the party and for Tom's new dairy farm. Their father had given the Hobbiton land back to Tom, and Mr. Frodo had amended the deed for them. "It'll be good to have my own place," he mused as they drove, bubbling over with plans for it till Rosie finally asked, "Are you taking on help, Tom? That's a lot of work for just one hobbit."

"Oh, I thought I'd told you," he said. "I've hired Stolph Chubb. He came to call the other day, while you were out. He looked sad to hear you're to wed." Tom gently elbowed Rosie, and she laughed. "He asked Dad for his old position back, and Dad showed him the door, none too gently; Stolph should never have flouted his word and become a Shirrif. But I caught him outside, and told him I'd be needing help. He made a mistake, but he's a good-hearted hobbit. I'll take the chance, if Dad won't."

"I think you're in the right," Rosie said, patting Tom's arm. "He did his best when he was a Shirrif, and I think he'll do well for you." She would have said more, but Tom turned his head, wonder on his face, and when she followed his gaze across to the Party Field she gasped. "Sam's tree!" The silvery _mallorn_ fluttered with yellow, as with flame; Rosie's heart clenched, but then she realized with relief that the yellow bursts were blossoms. "It's in bloom, Tom! We have to tell Mr. Frodo!"

"I'm sure he knows," said Tom dryly, just as Rosie noticed two hobbits sitting on the stump of the old Party Tree, one dark-haired and one with hair nearly as bright as the _mallorn's_ flowers. "Oh," Rosie said, and when Tom grinned at her she blushed. Mercifully, he didn't say anything more.

 

*

 

Rosie looked up from the dough she was rolling to glance out the window at the Party Field, where a swarm of helpful hobbits were setting up tables and benches, just as parties had ever been set up there since well before her birth. _You'd almost not think the past year happened_, she thought, but there in the midst of the bustling was the new Party Tree, slender and silver with a golden head of blooms.

A hand came gently to rest on her shoulder as a hobbit stepped up behind her. Rosie smiled, glanced at the hand, and said, "Mr. Frodo" before she turned to look at him, and he laughed. "You're not going to cook all day, I hope."

"No, sir, I've dancing to do." He chuckled warmly. "Still, I did think a few turnovers might be nice." She waved her hand at the trays cooling on the counter. "Those are apple, and I'm making those Tookland-style mint ones Mr. Pippin mentioned to me. That'll do it for the white flour, I'm afraid; I used the wholemeal to make seed-cakes and raisin bread."

"It all smells delicious." Rosie smiled at the compliment; the food wasn't as rich as it might have been in past years, nor as plentiful, but it would do and more, and after the last year any party was a grand occasion, any meal a feast. Mr. Frodo glanced over his shoulder, then, sure that no one was coming up the hall, stroked his hand down Rosie's arm, leaving tingles in its wake. "Sam said you are both staying tonight," he said, voice low and smoky round the edges. "And that he'd come stay in my bed if you would. Would you, Rosie? You don't have to, of course."

"But, Mr. Frodo, why would I say no?" She turned round entirely as she spoke, and his smile shone before he kissed her, hands pressing in just a bit at her shoulder and waist, the kiss brief but shading to heat.

Then he jumped back, as footsteps sounded down the hall, and Rosie spun and bent her flushed face over her cooking. "Mr. Frodo!" cried a tween lad's voice, "Dad sent me up to ask, shall we drape ribbons on the new Party Tree?"

"No, Toby, let's not. With its blossoms, it doesn't need any embellishments." Mr. Frodo's voice trailed off as he walked from the room with the lad, but Rosie smiled to herself as she cut out rounds of pastry, her lips still warm with his kiss, her heart warm within her.

 

*

 

Rosie sat in Bag End's renewed garden as it glowed in the afternoon light. She was dressed and beribboned for the party, and so were Marigold and Buttercup; she and Mari sat on either side of a white-faced Buttercup, holding her hands as she sat with eyes closed and breathed deeply. Mr. Frodo was already down at the Party Field, with Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, not to mention all of Hobbiton and half of Bywater and Overhill, but Tom and Sam and Jolly sat with their lasses as Buttercup slowly steadied herself. After all, with only bitter memories of Bag End as she had, none of them had thought she'd come up to the party till she'd decided that very day.

Buttercup opened her eyes; gripping Mari and Rosie's hands with white knuckles, and smiled with an effort. "Your garden is beautiful, Sam," she said, and her voice wavered only a little.

Sam smiled bashfully. "It's Mr. Frodo's garden, and I had help," he said, nodding to Tom, and pulling out his little wooden box. "The Lady's gift is all gone now, spread over the Shire, but it very much helped."

Buttercup's grip eased a bit. Rosie held out her other hand for the little box. "Sam, may I see it?" He gave it to her, and she raised the lid, feeling the silky finish of the wood, its intricate carving. And in a corner, was that one tiny grey grain? Rosie blew gently, and the mote drifted up on her breath, sparkled silver in the sunlight, and vanished.

At that moment, three things happened.

Buttercup relaxed her hold on her friends' hands, and when Rosie looked at her the color was back in her cheeks. Then Rosie's gaze was drawn past her to the lilac bush beside them, because it was waving, as if in a high wind, though the evening air was nearly still. _Oh my stars_, Rosie thought, as she watched the lilac's leaves lengthen, watched its buds swelling, watched its twigs rising, reaching up. She gasped; Mari cried out, "The garden! It's, it's---"

"_Growing_," Tom gasped. Sam gazed about him, speechless. All around them the garden was rustling and _moving_ with its growth, as the plants stretched into the air and unfurled along the ground. Flowers flared on the bushes all around them; violets and buttercups burst at their feet like sweet-scented fireworks. The plants curled round Jolly's knees as he knelt before Buttercup, and that was the third thing, as he took her hands and looked up at her radiant rosy face. "Buttercup," he asked, and she smiled, looking for all the world like one of the flowers blooming around them. "I think I can, Jolly," she softly replied, and he rose up on his knees and kissed her, tearing the others' attention from the animated garden. Rosie got up, unfurling clover and thyme tickling her feet with every step, and crossed over to Sam, to twine fingers as they watched Jolly and Buttercup kiss, watched Mari and Tom wind arms around each other and smile. "I think there's to be another wedding yet," Rosie murmured, and Sam nodded, and kissed her ear.

Flashes of purple drew their eyes up again; a heady perfume filled the air. The lilac, now taller than any of them, burst into bloom along its clusters, flower by flower.

 

*

 

"Oh, sir, you should have seen it." It was very late, or rather early, and the candlelight shone on Sam as he unwound one arm from round both of them to sketch the rearing lilac in the air. "The bush, it moved like a live thing. Well, 'tis a live thing, but you take my meaning." Mr. Frodo chuckled, nodding, his fingers drawing patterns on Sam's hip; Rosie felt Sam shudder just a little, as his grin tilted a bit. "Mr. Frodo, I think you're not paying attention."

"Of course I'm paying attention, Sam," said Mr. Frodo, shifting his arm beneath Rosie's back, when she arched a bit to free it he slipped it down to pinch her gently, and she gasped and giggled. "Rosie, wouldn't you say I'm paying attention?"

From where she lay between them she could look up into both their faces, Sam's dark eyes shining at Mr. Frodo even as he laughed, Mr. Frodo's merry blue threaded with gold. "You're paying attention to us, sir, but hardly to the story," she replied, and Mr. Frodo assumed a wounded look that made Rosie laugh and Sam lean over her to kiss him. She sighed as she watched them, always so beautiful together, Sam's broad hand gently cradling Mr. Frodo's cheek as their mouths pressed and danced; she wriggled a bit, skin warmly catching and sliding, shifting so she might press back against Sam and wind her arms round Mr. Frodo's neck, kissing both their cheeks. Mr. Frodo moaned low in his throat, and tilted his head to kiss her as Sam kissed her ear.

But then Mr. Frodo drew back, the look in his eyes tinged with rue. Rosie blinked with confusion, and Sam's breath hitched; when she looked back at Sam she saw his eyes going wide and sad, saw that he knew why. "Let's not have any chance that your first babe isn't fair-haired," Mr. Frodo murmured, unwinding Rosie's arms from his neck, kissing the palm of each hand, but there was another reason in his eyes. "It's your last night till your wedding, my dears. Let me watch you make it count."

He smiled at her, just a bit too wide; Rosie nodded, and kissed him softly as Sam wrapped his arms round her waist, before she turned again. Sam quivered in her arms, and Rosie felt a fierce flare of anger at a darkness that could rear up even after such a bright day and in such a warm bed; they deserved to be happy if ever anyone did, and she was going to do her best by them to drive the darkness back. So she kissed Sam and wound herself round him till his eyes filled with love rather than shadows, and she reached for Mr. Frodo's hands and pressed them to Sam's shoulders, and she willed the heat of Sam's arms and kisses to evaporate her lingering worries. As ever, it made it even better, if that were possible, to have Mr. Frodo with them and smiling at them, and afterwards as they came down he kissed them both and wrapped his limbs round them and sang softly to them in Elvish.

Snug between Mr. Frodo and Sam, the song echoing gently in her head, Rosie forgot everything but warm contentment. It wasn't till Sam lay faintly snoring in her ear and Mr. Frodo was asleep on her other side that two memories jolted her from her own doze. One was of their second Lithe, when he'd pinned her flat on her back, hands commandingly tight round her arms, and had growled, "we're not done yet, my darling Rose", and that growl had whipped up the fire in her blood; the other was of the night after this past Yule, when he'd gently told her, smile resigned and sweet, "Everything built on the Ring's power must fade, including me." Rosie opened her eyes and looked at Sam, warm and solid and sleeping in the candlelight; she turned as best she could and glanced at Mr. Frodo, and noted how she could nearly see the candlelight through him, and felt her eyes prickle. But if she wept she'd wake them, and that'd do no one good, so Rosie closed her eyes against the tears and concentrated on the moment, on the cozy feel of her two lads wound round her and each other, and soon enough she also was asleep.

 

*

As it turned out, it was less than a month to their wedding, for Tom and Mari insisted that Rosie and Sam marry first. "But Tom's the eldest," Rosie protested weakly, and he and Mari replied with bright laughter. "So? Sam's my elder," Mari said; Tom added, "without Sam, we'd still be under the Men's thumbs," and Sam blushed red as an apple.

Their Mam was delighted to hear it, but she also fretted. "Three weddings in a month! Three dresses!"

Rosie thought to herself that she wouldn't mind marrying in a flour sack, if she could just have Sam and move into Bag End with him and Mr. Frodo. "Two dresses, Mam. Daisy is giving Mari the dress Sam's Mam left them. And your wedding dress is yellow, that'll fit Buttercup."

"And what will you wear, my own only daughter?" A providential knock on the door interrupted the conversation; Rosie hurried down the hall, opened the door, and was pushed back a step by a wave of fear.

A Man stood there, and Rosie's first thought was to slam the door. But, she saw, as she looked up at him, this was not at all the sort of Man who had plagued the Shire. He was taller even than they, and straighter, slender and fair and with a sword girt to his side, clad in leather and well-worn dark wool, his long straight hair dressed simply back from his sad hawk-nosed face. "Greetings, Miss Cotton," he said in a deep and gentle voice.

Rosie took another step back; the curve of the doorway hid the Man's face. "Sam? Jolly?" she called over her shoulder, then took a breath and made herself step forward again. The days were gone when Men abused and carried off hobbits, she reminded herself. At least, she hoped so. "Greetings, sir, how do you know me?"

He sighed, and knelt on the doorstep, holding out both his large wide hands, one scarred across the palm. "I am Rinbarad son of Halbarad, and I have come on an errand from the--- from a friend of your betrothed." Rosie quivered tensely, the memories of a year screaming within her to run, but she planted her feet and nodded, and he looked sadder still. "I have never seen the halflings so displeased to see visitors," he said.

Fear flared to anger; Rosie folded her arms. "This year past ain't been the best," she said curtly. "And some of those who made it so bear a passing likeness to you, sir."

Rinbarad nodded, looking rueful. "Trust me please, Miss Cotton, when I tell you that I am a friend, and no kin to those who afflicted the Shire." His gaze flickered over her shoulder as Rosie heard footsteps behind her; she turned to see Sam and her mother racing each other down the hallway while both trying to hide it, her mother's face white with worry, Sam's carefully arranged in a smile.

Sam arrived first. "Greetings, _Dunedan_," he said, bowing, as Rosie's mother came up close by her, as if she'd rather stand before her. Rinbarad's mournful mouth curved into a wide smile, and Rosie realized with a shock that he was young, perhaps younger than she. "Greetings, Master Samwise Gamgee," he said, and Sam blinked. "We all know you, sir, and the--- and your friend Strider sent me with greetings for you and a gift for your bride."

Sam blushed, and smiled. "Please give my friend Strider my greetings, and my love." He held out his hand, and Rinbarad wrapped it in one of his own, then rose to his feet. "I must go," he said, reaching over his shoulder, and Sam shook his head frantically. "You've come all this way, I mean, this ain't my house, I haven't leave to invite you in, but----" he glanced at Mrs. Cotton, who stared back, looked up at the tall Man, and sighed. "Be he your friend, Samwise?" she asked in a low voice.

"He's a friend of the Shire," Sam replied, eager as a child. "He's a Ranger, Mrs. Cotton, kin to King Elessar himself." Rosie's mother raised her eyebrows; Rosie asked, "but he brought greetings from your friend Strider."

"Strider _is_ the King," Sam explained; Rosie remembered his tales, and understood, and nodded. Her mother looked at her with blank confusion, and she had to press her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle at the whole strange situation. "We ought to ask him in, Mam," she advised; her mother's answering expression suggested Rosie and Sam were asking her to grow wings, but she nodded, and turned to the Man. "Sir Ranger," she said, and her voice only shook a little, "would you like to come in?"

So Rosie and her mother entertained Rinbarad, who sat cross-legged on the floor and drank innumerable cups of tea while he and Sam spoke of distant lands and peoples and Rosie listened and kept pouring. After an hour or so, he stood up, carefully bending to keep from knocking his head on the ceiling, and bowed, and said, "I really must go, if I am to be at my lodgings by nightfall, but I must not forget your gift."

"Are you sure?" Sam asked. "Mr. Frodo would love to see you, and to send his own word to the King." Rinbarad's eyes grew round and wide at that, making him look quite young indeed. "Frodo son of Drogo?" he asked, sounding awestruck, and Sam nodded, and Rosie tilted her head and took it all in. She thought of how Mr. Frodo had said they were making songs of Sam's deeds far and wide, and wondered what songs they'd made of his.

Rinbarad shook his head, and smiled a wide slow smile. "I am persuaded, Master Gamgee," he said, reaching back to unsling a tube of leather. "But first. Miss Cotton, this is for you, with the King's blessing, and his hopes that he might meet you one day."

Rosie took the parcel, which was nearly as long as she was tall, shifted it clumsily to her side, and curtseyed as best she could. "Please give him my thanks," she said, "and I hope to meet him one day as well."

"I'll be by tomorrow," Sam told her with a quick kiss. "Mr. Frodo must see him!" Rinbarad bowed to Rosie and her mother once more before they left; Rosie blinked, and as she set the wonder of the day in her memory she undid the strap on the leather tube. It wobbled and slipped out of her hands to roll across the floor, unfurling a bolt of green silk as radiant as any leaf in Sam's gardens. Rosie and her mother gasped at the fine shimmering cloth spilled across their kitchen flagstones, and they stared at it for a long moment before Rosie realized how it must have come to her, and laughed for sheer delight. "Here's my wedding-dress, Mam," she said cheerfully. "By Mr. Frodo's doing, I'm sure of it!"

 

*

Indeed it was Mr. Frodo's doing; when Rosie went by Bag End the next morning to thank him, Sam let her in, and he had a faint pink bruise on his collarbone; she teased him for thanking Mr. Frodo before she could, and he blushed like a coal and kissed her. Rinbarad was curled in his cloak on the rug in the small parlor, so Rosie took a moment to write a note of thanks, marveling with each carefully shaped letter that she, little Rosie Cotton, was writing a letter to the King.

She also took the chance to wake Mr. Frodo with her thanks; he slid his hand up into her hair as he woke to her kiss, and chuckled warmly when she drew back. "Good morning, Miss Cotton," he said teasingly, and she laughed and sat on the side of his bed. "You'll give me airs, Mr. Frodo," she teased back. "Dressing me in silk, moving me into Bag End; I'll forget my place, sir."

His response to that was unexpectedly fierce; he sat up, blue eyes blazing, to clutch her hands. "Rosie Cotton, you're as fine a young lady as any, and finer than many," Mr. Frodo told her forcefully. "Do you think I'd want just anyone to marry the hobbit dearest to me in all the Shire? Do you think I could have taught just anyone her letters?" Rosie stared at him, and his stern face softened to a smile as he raised a hand to her cheek. "Do you think I'd find just any lass so fair? You deserve silk, my dear Rosie, and you deserve to live in Bag End, having done so much to mend it. You'll be beautiful at your wedding, but then you're beautiful always." She blushed beneath his stroking hand, and he squeezed her hands in his, then released her. "And I have a guest to see to," he said in gentle dismissal, and she nodded, still speechless, and got up again.

While Mr. Frodo spoke with Rinbarad, Rosie told Sam of what he'd said, and he smiled and touched her same cheek, his hand so much broader and rougher than Mr. Frodo's, and just as beloved. "He's said the same to me," Sam told her. "Of all the hobbits I've ever known, Mr. Frodo, and his cousin Mr. Merry, they're the least respecters of families, the most of hearts. I think he sees in me more'n I see in myself."

"I think he sees in you all of what you are," Rosie replied, and kissed Sam's cheek. "He's told me much you ain't said of your deeds, Sam." He blushed and pulled her to him, and murmured rough-gently, "so get a good dress made, me lass," and she smiled against his shoulder.

So, Rosie took the silk over to Mrs. Hamwich, who had moved with Andy to a nice little hole on the restored Clary Row, and took Mrs. Cotton's yellow dress as well. Buttercup was shorter than Mrs. Cotton, but had regained her lost weight and was a good plump lass again, so the dress hardly needed altering. Mari sent along her mother's blue dress, and by late April Mrs. Hamwich had all three of them in to fit their dresses.

Mrs. Hamwich and Mrs. Cotton laced and pinned them in, and they looked at each other, bright as fresh flowers, Mari in blue and Rosie in green and Buttercup in yellow. Mari's dress was frothed with lace across sleeves and bosom and skirt; Buttercup's had been embroidered in deeper yellow swirls by Rosie's grandmother. Rosie's was plain, if such shimmering green silk could be called plain, tucked high in back to better frame her bosom. "You look beautiful," Mrs. Cotton told them proudly, while Mrs. Hamwich sat in her sewing chair and indulged in a good cry, murmuring, "my little lass! Being wed!"and wiping her eyes.

"How did my Mam ever walk in this?" Mari said, lifting her skirts up around her calves. "It's so long!" She gave a little kick, and looked up at Rosie, mischief in her eyes. Rosie began to laugh helplessly, and when Mari did a dancing step Buttercup joined in, and soon they were dancing around Mrs. Hamwich's sitting room, flouncing their wide skirts about, giggling as if they were chits. Mrs. Hamwich stopped her weeping in astonishment, and Rosie's mother laughed till her sides shook. "Oh, my dears," she gasped, as they spun to a giggly stop, catching each other. "You three lasses, about to wed?"

Rosie spun once more, just for the joy of it all. "That we are, Mam, that we are."

*

When she went home that day, Rosie dragged another chest into her room and began folding her things, but when she drew her book out she paused and looked up at the rosebush by her window, laden with swollen buds when last year at that time it had been barely green. Soon it would be Buttercup's rosebush to tend, and Nibs' window to look up through; soon Rosie would look out of a Bag End window of mornings, and look behind her to see Sam in the bed. She thought of the times when she'd looked up at the rosebush and held the book as she clung to the faintest of hopes, and couldn't help but smile, at all her hopes exceeded. _In Western lands…_

A knock sounded at her door, and Rosie laid the book in her chest and called "come in!" Her father entered, looking nearly as cheerful as she felt. "Rosie my lass," he said warmly. "Being wed in a week and all. I can hardly credit it, the three of you having weddings this spring."

"I can hardly credit it either, Dad," she said cheerfully, as she crossed to embrace him. "All this happiness, after a year so dark! It feels like the world is made over new."

Her father looked at her with a proud smile, and just a glimmer of a tear in one eye. "You're getting married, my Rosie. It should feel so for you." He released her and sat on her bed. "How goes the packing?"

"Easy enough." She folded the skirt in her hands, then smiled at him again. "Is that what you came to ask me, Dad?"

He grinned. "Well, no. I just came to see my lass, before she's Mrs. Gamgee of Bag End." He shook his head in wonder. "You said time and again Sam would be back, when his own Gaffer thought him dead. How did you know, Rosie?"

Rosie shrugged and smiled, the song echoing in her head. "He's my Sam, Da. I just knew." Her father held out his hand, and she abandoned packing to sit beside him. 'And now you're to wed him," he said. "And to live in Bag End. "Tis a grand place, and all the more after you helped clear it up, but you're sure now, you don't want a little hole of your own?"

"Dad!" Rosie laughed. "I'm sure! _We're_ sure, Sam and I. I'd not take Sam from Mr. Frodo for anything."

Her father creased his brow. "He took Sam away with him, and all---"

Rosie sighed. "And he needed him, Dad. You know what they did away. They told us."

"A wild tale, it is." He smiled, nevertheless. "And it's of a piece with what happened here, and they did help us cast out the ruffians and all." He patted Rosie's hand. "I just had to ask, Rosie. When you're seeing off your babes to their weddings, you'll know why." She giggled at that, and leaned her head on his shoulder, and he put his arm round her. "It ain't a usual way to set up house, but what's usual this year? You're happy, and Sam's back, and Mr. Frodo will be good to you both. Be blessed, my lass. Bring me grandchildren."

Rosie laughed, rubbing the heel of her hand over her prickling eyes. "Oh, Dad. Thank you." She wrapped an arm round him, and he squeezed her back. "I will."

 

*

 

Laughter rang through the front hall of Bag End, where Sam stood with Rosie in his arms, both laughing as if they'd never stop. Sam had just borne Rosie over the threshold and kicked the door shut behind them. Their wedding day was over, their things were moved, their families and friends and half the Westfarthing had cheered them and danced round them and supped heartily with them and sung them home. They were married. They were home in Bag End. And, Mr. Frodo having been whisked off by the most mischievous-looking Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, and Rosie's brothers having been herded away by Mari and Mrs. Cotton, they were finally alone.

Sam let Rosie down onto her feet, and she clung to him, looking up at his wide eyes, memories of the day spinning through her head: Buttercup and Mari and her Mam dressing her, her brothers driving her down to the Party Field; her Mam and Dad sitting on either side of her; how handsome Sam had looked in his new clothes, and how Sam's face had shone like the Sun when he saw her; Mr. Frodo smiling up at them from the front of the crowd, glowing softly like the Moon in daylight. And now, she had the whole shining night, and Sam, who looked down at her as if she were the whole bright world, and whispered, "hullo, Mrs. Gamgee."

"Hullo, Mr. Gamgee," Rosie replied, and laughed again till it rang, for the sheer joy of it, and spun round, arms out, dress swirling round her flower-wreathed feet. "We're married, Sam, we're married!"

"We're married." Sam took her hand in both of his. "Ah, my Rosie, the nights I dreamed of this, a warm bed and you! But I sound like a milksop," he trailed off, blushing, shaking his head.

Rosie squeezed Sam's hands. "You sound like my Sam," she said. "You are my Sam. And Mr. Frodo's Sam. You have us both!" Sam shook his head in delighted disbelief, and kissed her, pulling her close again. "I do, Rosie," he said in hushed wonder, for a moment staring into the distance. "I have what the Lady..." He shook his head, and his brown eyes cleared and warmed and fixed on her again, his gaze warm as stroking hands. "I have my two dears, Rosie, because you ever understood, because you're a lass like no other. How am I so lucky?"

"It ain't luck if you deserve it, Sam," Rosie laid her hand on the silk weskit, over his great heart. "You're the best hobbit in the Shire, and I'm proud to be your Rose. And Mr. Frodo's Rose. We're the lucky ones, Sam, we have you."

Sam shook his head again, and kissed her, and Rosie wound her arms round his neck and kissed him back with heat and parted lips; then she squeaked into the kiss, as he picked her up again. "Sam!"

"Bed, Rosie," he said, eyes sparkling. "We ain't spending our first wedded night in the entry hall."

Well, he did have a point there. Rosie nibbled his eartip for reply, and laughed again when he blushed and bore her off almost at a run.

*

Having not been to the Free Fair in several years, because as a tween she would always dance Lithe at the Party Field in Hobbiton, Rosie had forgotten quite how large the it was, and how crowded, and how hot. But then, it was a special year, with an Overlithe and all, and after last year's lack of a Fair and other Troubles. So she fanned herself and sipped tepid water and reminded herself that she would not be sick. She was too happy to be sick. It was Lithe, and she was warm all through with sunshine and love and already carrying her first child; Mr. Frodo was about to resign the Mayorship back to the properly fattened-up Will Whitfoot, so he might do all the things he talked of, visiting his kin and writing a history of the War; and Sam was happy and honored by all for his remarkable young trees, besieged for his gardening advice, red as a prize tomato and smiling ear to ear. Rosie was far too happy to be sick.

Two lads walked past her bearing a rack of redolent sausages, and her gorge rose. She breathed deeply and took another sip of water.

"Rosie? Rosie Gamgee!" She spun, recognizing the voice, holding her arms out, and Buttercup flung herself into them. "Rosie!"

"Buttercup! Buttercup Cotton! Are my brothers here?" They hadn't spoken of attending the Fair, the last time she'd seen them over supper. Buttercup nodded as she pushed back just far enough to look at Rosie; Rosie regarded Buttercup as well, pleased to see her cheeks pink and plump, her eyes bright. "Nick and Tom are, Tom's got a booth, and Andy's helping of course." They both smiled at that, at Andy and Nick as inseparable as ever. "And Jolly, too. Nibs is down in Hobbiton, though, dancing Lithe."

Rosie giggled at that, and sighed. "I do miss dancing Lithe. I'm an old married lady now." Buttercup laughed, and squeezed Rosie again. "Old my foot-curls, Rosie! You're glowing, is what you are." Dropping her voice, Buttercup murmured, "Have you caught a babe? I have!"

"Oh, Buttercup! I have too!" They danced in a little circle of happiness, nearly knocking into a gammer carrying two enormous baskets of turnovers; fortunately, she smiled at their apologies and kept on her way. "Oh, Rosie," Buttercup whispered, eyes shining, holding Rosie's hands, "Oh, I wasn't, I didn't know if I could, after, well..." Rosie nodded, understanding. "And I said as much to Jolly, and he said he wanted me, chits or no. But I caught! I'll bear him a babe! And you've caught too! What a year this is!"

Rosie opened her mouth to agree, but curved it into a smile instead as Marigold saw them and started over. Mari smiled, but she looked pale, and Rosie held out an arm to her and so did Buttercup. "Mari! Be you well?"

"Rosie, Buttercup, it's good to see you." Mari leaned on Rosie's shoulder and accepted a sip of water, shaking her head. "I'm happy, but I've been green recently, bringing up my first breakfasts. It ain't like me. I hope it eases soon."

Rosie and Buttercup looked at each other and laughed, and then they kissed Mari's cheeks. "It'll ease, Mari," Rosie said cheerfully, "and you'll even have a little one into the bargain, I'll warrant."

Marigold blinked, and then began to laugh, tipping her head back, glowing in the sunshine. "Oh, I've caught! Why'd I not see! Oh, and you?" They nodded, and Mari laughed again, embracing them both as the three of them stood in the sunshine of Lithe and laughed for joy.


End file.
